


Involuntary Commitment

by Ignaz Wisdom (ignaz)



Series: A Modest Proposal and Involuntary Commitment [2]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, M/M, Rehabilitation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-17
Updated: 2010-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:56:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 42,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignaz/pseuds/Ignaz%20Wisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House heads to rehab. Things go pretty much as well as you'd expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the sequel to my (rather old) [A Modest Proposal](http://archiveofourown.org/works/355). Both are set in season three—they actually make up a sort of alternative season—and contain no spoilers for anything past then. You don't need to be familiar with A Modest Proposal in order to follow Involuntary Commitment (although I think it's a fun read, and it might help explain how we got to this improbable place).
> 
> About the medicine: a lot of research went into this thing ... and then a lot of research went right back out again. I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, and I hope you'll bear with me and understand that some sacrifices had to be made for the sake of telling a story.
> 
> **Warning:** Contains mentions of canonical self-harm.
> 
> Pulling this thing together redefined the word "grueling." I very much hope you find it worth the effort.

_It is better to marry than to burn._

\- Saint Paul, 1 Cor. 7 King James Version -

* * *

_February 2007_

Michael Tritter spied the object on his desk from across the precinct bullpen and frowned. He wasn't expecting any deliveries. He hadn't done anything recently to earn a gift. In fact, his last major bust—the one he'd dreamed about, the one that had kept his spirits up for weeks—had just ended, abruptly, with a plea bargain and the perp going free.

Or not exactly _free_. Court-ordered rehab wasn't freedom. It was still a damn sight better than prison, though, and more than the son of a bitch deserved. Tritter still ground his teeth every time he thought about it.

As he stalked towards his desk, the object revealed itself to be a large basket, its contents covered by a red-and-white checkered napkin and festooned with a ribbon. There was a small card tied to the top. He snatched it off and flipped it open.

The note inside read SUCK ON THIS and was signed with x's and o's and the name that would forever induce frothing, pulsing rage: _House_.

The basket contained a large pile of lemons.

* * *

Wilson made it almost fourteen hours before he found himself back in bed, his face pressed as close as he could get to the pillow—the one that still sort of smelled like House, if he concentrated—jerking off. His familiar left hand was a poor substitute, but his dick didn't seem to care. He'd been hard since he walked through the apartment door that evening, and no amount of medical journals, cancer case files, or reality television with dancing C-list celebrities could completely kill his arousal.

He couldn't help feeling that there was something vaguely pathetic about beating off under the circumstances—the circumstances being "missing House"—so he'd resisted for as long as possible. In the end, though, it was a losing battle. After all, he was a guy, and still relatively young, not to mention—oh, the hell with it—newly married. He'd gotten back into a rhythm (_god, yes, perfect rhythm, hand sliding up and down the length of his cock_) of getting off on a regular basis, and the habit was hard to break.

The lingering scent of sex in the bedroom was almost certainly a product of his imagination. Then again, maybe not. He'd had more sex the night before House started rehab than he'd had on his last honeymoon. It was as if House actually believed they could "store up" enough to get through the eight-week court-enforced celibacy period, or, perhaps more pragmatically, as if he believed that gorging himself on sex would make him stop wanting it for a while. A sex hangover, maybe.

Wilson hoped that House was having better luck with that plan than he was.

He squeezed his cock and breathed a low, frustrated groan into the pillow, trying to conjure up some pleasant fantasy. Unfortunately, all his brain would supply was the memory, scintillating but depressing, of their last encounter, in the blue-black hours of the previous morning.

He'd been woken first by the alarm beeping and a moment later by House's arm, falling heavily across Wilson's chest, preventing him from getting out of bed. It was strangely reassuring. He'd gone to sleep the night before half expecting House to sneak out in the middle of the night with Wilson's wallet and flee the country. He'd already been bracing himself for the phone call from somewhere in South America.

"Don't make this harder than it has to be," he'd begged, wondering how long House had been awake and pondering this last desperate attempt at getting out of rehab.

"Who, me?" House had answered flatly. His arm didn't move, but Wilson felt the rest of him slide closer, the better to pin Wilson down.

Wilson pursed his lips. "We made a deal with the prosecutor. It's only two months—"

"Shut up." The mattress shifted as House suddenly rolled away, only to return a moment later and thrust two objects into Wilson's hand, kissing him hard on the mouth. House had been awake for a while, apparently, and had indeed managed to get out of bed without disturbing Wilson. He tasted like spearmint toothpaste.

"Mmf," Wilson said. "What ..." But he had a condom and lube in one hand, and even half asleep, the answer to that one was pretty clear.

"Do it," House said quietly, lying on his front, with what sounded to Wilson like embarrassment.

He ran his hand down House's back, feeling the tension in his muscles, and thought about everything they'd done prior to falling asleep—something he immediately regretted, as most of the blood in his brain went straight to his dick, which was still protesting last night's abuses. "Aren't you sore?"

"Shut _up_," House repeated. "Come on."

Well, if he was going to be like that ... Wilson reasoned that he had no choice but to oblige. The matter was out of his hands. House was a stubborn bastard; if he wanted to be fucked, then Wilson had to fuck him, just as hard and as slow and as sweet as he pleased, knowing full well that it would make them late—knowing that it would be the last time for a very long time.

So he leaned over House's back, lips trailing over his neck and shoulders, sliding two slick fingers down the cleft of his ass. House's body was warm, pliant, yielding: everything the man himself wasn't. He moaned something indecipherable into a pillow as Wilson's fingers penetrated him.

"Eight weeks," House muttered a moment later.

Wilson bit the side of House's neck and pressed his fingers deeper. "You'll get through this."

"I'm not going to get any for _eight weeks_."

"I have it on good authority that you've survived longer dry spells. Turn over."

House rolled onto his back and let Wilson carefully shift him until his legs were resting on Wilson's thighs. Wilson tore open the condom, rolled it down over his dick, and then reached for House—only to find that he was completely soft.

Wilson sighed and leaned back. "Are you sure about this?" he asked. "We don't have to—"

House lifted his head. "How did you ever manage to get laid before me?" he snapped. "What do you want, an engraved invitation? James Wilson is cordially invited to _fuck me already_, while he's still—"

The rest of the tirade ended in a long groan as Wilson, tired and annoyed, dispensed with formalities and fucked him already. He slid in with one hand guiding his cock and the other carefully holding House's leg, wincing only slightly. It was a miracle he hadn't started _chafing_.

House's head fell backwards, hitting the pillow with a dull thump. "Wait." He grimaced.

Wilson thought about ignoring him, but they had enough problems already. It was getting lighter in the room, another reminder of the time they didn't have. He rested on his heels, muscles trembling, watching as House's face cleared and he nodded for Wilson to continue. He rocked forward, not too hard or fast, not that he could move that well in that position anyway. House's back arched even further off the bed, pushing to meet each slow thrust.

"You're obnoxious," Wilson huffed, sliding deeper into the tight heat.

House's face broke into an exhausted grin. "You love it."

"Not even close," Wilson assured him, lifting his hips slightly, repositioning House to take more of his cock.

They fucked for what felt like hours. To Wilson, the urgency of the situation was inescapable. In between staring at House and shutting his eyes against the pleasure, he kept glancing at the clock, timing how much longer they had, and incidentally staving off his orgasm in the process. Nothing killed the mood like an impending incarceration.

But not for House, it seemed, as he urged Wilson on with muttered expletives, one hand braced on the bed and the other on his own dick. He didn't appear to be the least bit bothered by the fact that he still wasn't hard. He rocked back and forward onto Wilson's cock, face twisted with pleasure.

Wilson stared hard at him, focused on making him feel good, and willed reality to leave them alone for just a few minutes longer.

House groaned and then opened his eyes wide before slamming them shut again. "Oh," he breathed, surprised. "_Oh_," and then Wilson watched in amazement as his face contorted, his hips bucked, and his entire body went through the obvious signs of orgasm. Almost his entire body.

Wilson stared. "Did you just? Without even—"

"Yeah. Thanks," House said, his mouth curving into a satisfied smile.

Now, alone in a bed that had never felt this big, Wilson jerked his own cock with almost punishing strokes and came, shuddering, making a slippery mess of his hand and abdomen. He caught his breath.

"This sucks," he announced to the empty apartment.

There was no one to listen to his complaint. Even Steve McQueen was gone, having been entrusted to Cameron's care. He doubted that House had taken Wilson's potential loneliness into consideration when outsourcing the rat-sitting duties. Then again, House had always been stellar at not taking Wilson into consideration, no matter the circumstances. Wilson took a moment to fume once more over the fact that House had waited until _after_ they started fucking to decide to go to rehab. Before the fucking, Wilson wouldn't have realized how much he was missing.

He knew, of course, that their changed situation had a lot to do with House going to rehab in the first place—maybe everything to do with it. He'd been offered a deal—eight weeks in rehab in exchange for a plea of no contest—and he'd taken it, even though it had seemed certain at the time that he wouldn't need it. He could have walked away scot-free, but he didn't. He'd known that they couldn't go on the way things were before. Everything had changed.

It had seemed important that House know what this meant to Wilson, so on the tense drive to the rehab center that morning, Wilson had ventured a supportive, even affectionate comment.

"I know how difficult this is," he'd started.

"Screw you," House had bluntly answered from the passenger seat.

Wilson had pursed his lips and kept his eyes on the road.

House was sullen and silent the entire way to the rehab center. He was also sitting strangely, on one hip, like it hurt to sit normally, which gave Wilson a mean little twinge of pleasure. Wilson stole glances from time to time but refused to offer up any more seeds of conversation for House to quash. He didn't mind bearing the brunt of House's resentment, but he wasn't going to _help_ the guy, so the rest of the drive passed quietly.

They'd struck a deal with the prosecutor that allowed them to choose from several accredited rehab centers in the state. The place they'd finally settled on was an hour and a half from Princeton and resembled a college campus more than a place where addicts went to detox. Even the name, Sea Harbor, sounded like a beach resort or gated community, which Wilson guessed was sort of the idea. It was easier to tell your friends and neighbors that you were going to "Sea Harbor" than to tell them you were going to drug rehab.

House hated the place, of course, but he hated it less than all the others they'd looked at; what's more, by some miracle, the staff at Sea Harbor were actually willing to accept House, even after meeting him in person. Their services seemed promising, if not a little absurd. The web site boasted over five acres of manicured green space, which Wilson found soothing and House found to be a barrier against escape akin to the San Francisco Bay surrounding Alcatraz. It also advertised equine therapy. Searching for facilities, Wilson had smirked and said, "But this place has _horses_"; House had thrown a book at his head. He couldn't exactly see House taking to equine therapy unless it was for the purposes of hijacking an animal and galloping back to Princeton.

But Sea Harbor was one of the few residential treatment facilities in the area willing and able to work individually with each patient, with attention to his personal history and existing medical conditions, including disability and chronic pain—or at least that was what they said. In point of fact, Wilson had no real idea whether Sea Harbor was equipped to deal with House. He had been pretty sure that _nobody_ was equipped to deal with House. He tried to stay optimistic, but there was only so far that luck could carry them, and they'd already stretched their chances pretty thin.

As Wilson pulled off at the exit, he felt the tremendous weight of a familiar sense of dread: the same dread that had typically preceded college exams, every single day of House's trial, and most of his weddings. House's face was inscrutable. _It's not jail_, Wilson told himself, and tried to breathe normally. _At least it's not—_

"Don't touch my car," House said.

Wilson frowned. "What?"

"You heard me. Don't touch it. Don't drive it."

"Uh huh. What are you going to do if I do touch it?"

House considered. "Something horrifying. When you least expect it."

"I'm quaking in my loafers," Wilson muttered, and signaled before turning into Sea Harbor's long, winding driveway.

The sensation of sinking grew stronger as they approached the main building, a solid, institutional structure. Wilson waited for House to make another crude deflection of the seriousness of their situation—maybe another complaint about having to abstain from sex for so long, like _that_ was the issue—but none came.

He parked, and for a long moment they both stared at the blue sign with the white wheelchair outline marking their spot. Then House jerked the door handle and shoved his way out of the car. Wilson followed, hunching his shoulders against the bitter February chill.

The building opened to a waiting room that bore more than a passing resemblance to a dentist's office. A silk tree in a pot stood in a corner. One major difference: a uniformed security guard skulking by the door through which they'd just entered. Behind the high counter, women in multicolored scrubs shuffled clipboards and manila envelopes with smooth, nearly automated motions. They lifted their heads when House and Wilson stepped inside.

"Welcome to Sea Harbor. Can I help you?" one of them asked.

House didn't even glance over, leaving Wilson to answer, "Just a minute."

He dropped House's bag, which he'd been carrying. They'd already filled out the pre-admission paperwork. After chuckling bitterly at the three scant lines provided on the intake form for each of "current health," "current medications," and "legal problems," Wilson had simply written up a few pages of explanation and stapled them to the form.

There was nothing left now for him to do, but he couldn't quite bring himself to leave. Beside him, House's face was expressionless, blank.

Sea Harbor stipulated that all new patients had to undergo a seven-day blackout period, during which, barring an emergency, they would be unable to communicate with anyone outside the facility. No visits. No phone calls. House would be cut off from everything, cut off from _him_ ...

"So," Wilson began. _Everything will be fine_, he wanted to say, but the words caught in his throat suddenly, choking him. He coughed instead.

They stood a few safe feet apart, the duffel bag on the floor between them, and stared evenly at each other.

"Good luck," Wilson managed to say, for which House gave him a reproachful, disappointed look. "Sorry," he added. "I know that's ..."

House ducked his head and stared at the floor for a while. The security guard by the door was starting to look suspicious.

Wilson wondered if he should hug House—kiss him, maybe. When they'd been faking a relationship that didn't exist, House had kissed him in a cafeteria full of their colleagues; now that it was real, they were both frozen in their places.

"Call me," Wilson said, and without touching House again, he left.

The last thing he saw as he turned the corner was House still staring after him with the same eerily empty expression on his face, the duffel bag sitting at his feet.

Later, Wilson had gone to work. He'd seen his patients, started catching up on his backlog of paperwork, and been mostly impervious to the curious looks of nearly every other PPTH employee who walked past him—and to a visit from Cameron, anxious to know anything Wilson might know about House's condition. News traveled fast. He'd stayed until Cuddy came by and threatened to fire him if he didn't go home, and then he'd gone back to an empty apartment, sat around feeling sorry for himself for a while, and jerked off alone.

So really, what else was new with his life?

This _sucked_.


	2. Chapter 2

House watched Wilson leave the lobby of Sea Harbor like there was a pack of demons on his heels: further proof that House wasn't the only person in this relationship with issues—just the only one with criminal charges attached to them.

He felt a twinge of pain in his thigh as the door swung shut and Wilson abandoned him to his fate. He frowned. It was too soon for his leg to start hurting again, especially since he'd just finished off his entire remaining stash of pills that morning while Wilson was in the bathroom.

He looked around the lobby, noting the linoleum floor and cheap, mass-produced chairs with stiff cushions in loud patterns, designs that probably did wonders for hiding the stains of vomit and other bodily excretions. The air smelled clean but stale. He expected to hear Muzak or the low sound of a radio tuned to some inoffensive AOR station, but other than the normal sounds of quiet office work, the place was silent.

The security guard by the door stared impassively. House wondered how many people had tried to get past him, what their fates were. He envisioned kicking, screaming junkies being hauled back inside.

He leaned heavily on his cane. Of course, he wouldn't even be able to get that far.

His stomach clenched. Rehab had seemed like a good idea at the time, which only went to prove how right he had been to spend all those years screwing working girls and his own right hand. He was incapable of making good decisions under the influence of whatever the hell Wilson had done to him. He should have turned down the deal. He should have taken his chances and finished the trial. If he'd wanted to be rehabilitated—and he _didn't_—he could have done it voluntarily, not by order of the state of New Jersey.

But now he was here, and there was no way out.

At least no _easy_ way out. He might be here by court order, but no way was he going down without a fight.

"Greg?"

He turned at the unexpected use of his given name and then looked down. Beaming up at him from chest level was a middle-aged woman with spiked silver hair and a round, blandly pleasant face. "Welcome to Sea Harbor," she said, grabbing his hand for a forceful shake before he could deflect. "I'm Cindy Friedman. I'll be your counselor. Why don't we step into my office?"

House narrowed his eyes at her, but picked up the bag Wilson had left and slung it over his shoulder. He limped after her, walking awkwardly with the duffel affecting his already shaky balance, and followed her the short distance to a small office. The space was cluttered with stacks of paper, some of which stood taller than Friedman herself, and the shelves lining the walls were stuffed with books and even more loose papers. Cheap knickknacks adorned the limited remaining space: a slinky, a pink rubber duck, a figurine of a disturbed-looking sheep.

Friedman gestured at the chair on the opposite side of her desk. "Did you have any trouble getting here?"

He sat down gingerly and considered telling her, in graphic detail, about the trouble they'd had getting out of bed that morning—but it was too early in the game to play one of his better cards. "No," he said. For now, monosyllabic answers would do. He'd bring out the big guns later, when he needed to really freak someone out.

"Good, good," Friedman said. "So what do you say we jump right in, shall we?"

"I can't wait," House said flatly.

Friedman opened a manila folder sitting in the center of her desk. "I already know a little bit about you from your initial meeting with our outreach representative, but it's our policy that all new patients receive a full assessment upon admission to determine the initial diagnosis and a recommended direction of therapy."

"That's okay," he said dryly, "I don't have to do the assessment. I've got a doctor's note."

He did have a doctor's note: two of them, actually. One was from Wilson, explaining the infarction and his pain management history. The second was from Cuddy, who had decreed that a letter from his legal spouse was not likely to be taken as seriously as a letter from a hospital dean of medicine, even if said dean was, as House put it, just a bureaucrat in a bustier. House had offered to write a doctor's note of his own and sign it with an invented name, but Wilson still wasn't over the prescription forgeries that had landed him in jail and now in rehab in the first place, and didn't appreciate the humor.

"It's important for us to make our own assessment and draw our own conclusions," Friedman answered smoothly. "I'm sure you understand. Now, I'm going to give you a copy of our admissions packet, and we'll review the contents together so you can make an informed decision regarding admission. Is that okay, Greg?"

"_Wow_," he said, feigning surprise, "you say that like you actually believe I can still make decisions regarding admission."

"I practiced last night in a mirror," Friedman said brightly, and passed him a plastic binder across the desk. "The first thing you'll see in here is about your rights as a patient—"

"The non-existent ones."

"Well, Greg, not quite. I understand that you're here as part of an alternative sentencing program. That's unusual; most of our patients here are admitted on their own recognizance, and some are brought in following an intervention, but we've never worked with a patient in your exact circumstances before. Frankly, most drug abusers who get sent to rehab by the judicial system can't afford a place like Sea Harbor. So you're a very special case indeed."

"That's what my mom always said."

"A woman of character, I'm sure. Anyway, you're correct to point out that your rights as a patient are—let's say somewhat more curtailed. Nevertheless, this is a medical facility and you have the right to be treated with the same care and respect as any other patient. I'd like you to look through the document, if it's not too much trouble. You can save it for later if you like," she added, a hint of impishness behind her eyes. "It can be kind of dull here, so unless that bag you brought is full of trashy novels, you might appreciate the reading material. It's a little dry—but then dry is what we're all about here at rehab!"

House scowled.

"I keep hoping I'll get a laugh out of that one someday," Friedman confessed. "I've been using it for five years and it hasn't happened yet. Well, let's move on. You'll also find our complaint policy in the binder, which is an explanation of how we resolve conflicts and grievances if they occur. I predict that you'll be spending a lot of time with that one."

"Perceptive."

"Ain't I just? You'll also find information about health insurance and the fees for becoming a patient at the facility, which I believe you've already paid ..." Friedman shuffled through some papers. "Or which have been paid on your behalf by a James Wilson." She raised an eyebrow.

"Sugar daddy," he explained.

"Ah," Friedman said with a knowing expression. "Well, then, I guess you won't be needing any info on our installment plan. Kidding, of course. Shall we move on? There are a few other items in your binder, including a set of patient standards, which provide an outline of our expectations for you. There's also a schedule of our therapeutic activities and programs throughout the week—you will have to participate in one or more weekly sessions during your stay here. If you don't mind, I'm going to step out of the room for a minute while you look over those materials. If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them when I come back, okay?"

Friedman got up to leave. House was eyeing the window behind her desk when, just before stepping out the door, she added, "It doesn't even open, so don't bother."

He ground his teeth as the door closed behind him, then jiggled the handle even though he already knew it would be locked. He slumped back into his chair. There was a mini fridge in the corner of the room, which he opened, but the only thing inside was a half-empty Pepsi bottle. He didn't have the energy to tamper with it. With nothing else to do, he opened the binder and started reading. He breezed through the patient rights section, eyes glazing over, and skimmed over the standards. He blinked at the programming schedule. Art therapy? Yoga? _Adventure-based counseling?_

He was going to _kill_ Wilson for sending him here.

He ended up back on the first page of the binder, reading over Sea Harbor's "philosophy" of treatment.

**1\. Treatment for chemical dependency is not a destination, but a journey. Addiction is a chronic condition, which requires lifelong attention and management.**

_Not unlike some other conditions_, he thought, hand moving instinctively to his thigh.

**2\. Treatment for chemical dependency requires a multifaceted approach. We have specialists to work on every aspect of your illness, to meet your medical, psychological, and spiritual needs. **

**3\. Chemical dependency is a medical condition and should be treated with science-based, medically proven methods. **

_Although the yoga might suggest otherwise._ He sure hoped that Wilson was getting a good laugh out of that.

**4\. All patients deserve attention that is tailored to their unique individual needs. Chemical dependency affects people of all ages, races, genders, and socioeconomic statuses. **

**5\. Chemical dependency is a family disease. The presence of family members during treatment can be a positive factor in a patient's recovery. **

He reread the last line of Sea Harbor's philosophy and smiled.

Friedman rapped on the door before letting herself back in. "How are we doing in here, Greg?"

"Never better," he snapped.

"Great. So let's talk a little bit more about you, okay?"

"Can we skip the Kumbaya stuff and get straight to the medical program? What useless detox drug are you going to stick me on while you try to wean me onto an equally useless NSAID?"

"Greg—"

"_House_."

She smiled patiently. "At Sea Harbor we prefer to call everybody by their first name."

"I get it. The artificial sense of intimacy is so integral to the process."

"Exactly!" Friedman grinned at him, _grinned_, and he couldn't decide whether he wanted to bash her in the head with his cane or whether he actually liked the little witch. "You and I are going to have such fun together. But right now I want to talk about more serious things, and then I promise I'll ship you right off to our medical personnel. Deal?"

"Fine."

"Then let's do a brief review of your medical history and current condition. You experience chronic pain due to an infarction in your thigh that took place eight years ago. The pain is neuropathic, caused by damaged nerve fibers that send pain signals to your CNS, even though the injury has long since healed. You've been taking Vicodin to manage the condition since you came out of surgery following the infarction. You're dependent on the drug, and you've built up a tolerance, which is leading to your needing higher and higher dosages. Stop me if I'm boring you."

"You're boring me."

"Sea Harbor is a substance abuse rehabilitation center, and of course that's why you're here—legally speaking, at least. But we also have extensive training in pain management, and we understand the role that pain plays in certain kinds of addiction. You'll be treated for both conditions here. We'll be detoxing you and supplementing with a small amount of methadone. Over the next few weeks, we're going to gradually increase that amount until we reach a level where you're comfortable without being in danger. We want to improve your quality of life without risking your life—that's the goal here.

"At the same time, you'll continue to meet with me to talk about whatever's on your mind. I'm recommending a course of physical therapy—don't roll your eyes at me," she said without looking up. "We also have a variety of counseling services available. Some sessions will be mandatory, as part of your court-ordered treatment; others you can choose to attend, or not, of your own volition."

"Let's say not."

"You might be surprised at how boring it can get here without a little therapy to break up the monotony. We can stop here for now. There will be plenty of time to talk later. I think you're going to get through this just fine," Friedman said, closing the folder with finality.

"And if you don't," she continued, "there's always prison." Then she cackled, and House thought with absolute clarity, _I'm screwed_.

* * *

The clinic turned out to be down the hall from Friedman's office. She left him sitting in a waiting room with a week-old copy of the _New York Times_ and someone of indeterminate age—and come to think of it, indeterminate sex—with knotted purple hair covering its face and knees pulled up to its chin.

The person looked up at his arrival with alert, owlish eyes, revealing itself to be female. She had studs through her left nostril and opposite eyebrow and her face was marked with acne scars. "What are you in for?" she asked, her voice like that of a forty-year chainsmoker.

House crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his head back against the wall behind his chair. "Pissing off a cop."

"No kidding," she said. "I mean, what are you _on_? What did they bust you for?"

He shaved a few years off his estimate of her age. "Vicodin," he said, not bothering to lie. There were worse vices. Particularly here.

"I was on Vicodin once. After I had surgery. That shit's pretty sweet." The woman—girl, he was now sure, although she looked at least ten years older—paused for a long minute, still staring unnervingly at him. "What did you do to the cop?"

"I stuck a thermometer in his ass," House answered. "And left it there."

The girl grinned. Her teeth were a yellow mess. "You _what_?"

"I'm a doctor. He was there for a medical exam. He kicked my cane out from under me, so I left a thermometer in his ass."

She barked a laugh. "Good for you, man. Fuck the police!"

A corner of his mouth curved upward involuntarily. "What are you in for?"

"You name it, I've tried it," the girl said with more than just a hint of misguided pride. "Ran away from the last place."

"That's the spirit," House said drily.

A door opened and a nurse stuck her head through the crack. "Greg House? We're ready for you now."

"See you later, Greg House," the girl promised as he shuffled out of the room.

There was nothing new about the routine humiliation of a medical exam by strangers. He'd been through it from both sides more times than he could count. Strip. Put on the frayed, misshapen hospital gown. Answer the same questions, invasive enough to annoy but not profound enough to reach anything meaningful. Stick arm out for tuberculin injection, to test for TB. Piss in a cup for the drug screening. Because he'd gone into cardiac arrest during the infarction, Sea Harbor's clinical staff insisted on giving him an EKG—to determine how badly they could fuck him up before he had another heart attack, he was sure.

The fistful of pills he'd taken earlier that morning was kicking in, and he sat numbly through the process, docile and quiet. While a nurse attached a plastic ID bracelet around his wrist, a doctor explained the detoxification protocol. As a long-term opiate user, and in light of his "condition," he'd be put on methadone as a replacement therapy, starting with one dose every morning. He smiled sickly at the news. It wouldn't be enough. Like anything but Vicodin ever would.

But he'd been through this more than once. He'd been through it in December, and he'd survived. He was like a cockroach. Nothing could kill him.

_Eight fucking weeks._

Yet another clinic staff member led him from the clinic to the room he'd be staying in for the duration of the program. It looked like a Motel 6 inside, minus the TV. He had the room to himself: that was the one redeeming quality of this place.

He dumped his bag and the binder Friedman had given him on the bed and then dumped himself on it, too, falling back and staring at the ridges of chipping paint on the ceiling.

His leg hurt like a bitch.


	3. Chapter 3

Two days later, Wilson thought he was doing pretty well. Ten- and twelve-hour shifts at the hospital had a way of taking one's mind off things. He was staying there late because he didn't want to go home. Home—there was still something wrong about thinking of House's place that way. And if sitting alone in his hotel room had been a nightmare, sitting alone in the enormous apartment full of House's things was worse. There had been a night when he'd slept in his office just to avoid looking at the empty couch in front of House's silent television, the empty space on the other side of the bed.

He was getting work done, though, in between ducking the pitying stares of the colleagues who knew what was going on. He was catching up on his reading. In fact, he'd just finished reading an article on a novel protein that could accelerate nerve regeneration, something that could prove useful to his patients a few years down the road. His desk had never been cleaner. He was doing just fine.

At least until Cameron walked into his office.

She'd forgiven him for selling House out to Tritter, and the phony civil union seemed to have really redeemed him in her eyes, but his actually _consummating_ said union hadn't improved his and Cameron's interdepartmental relations. He knew she'd been pining after House for ages. Wilson had even counseled her about it. It was entirely possible that she felt betrayed, as if Wilson had stolen House away from her.

Even if House had technically been _his_ first.

"You've lost weight," Cameron said cautiously.

"Thanks."

"I didn't mean it as a compliment."

Wilson eyed her up and down. One hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, he'd wager. "Like you're in a position to talk?"

Cameron ignored the remark and gestured at the wall between their respective offices. "We're going out for drinks after work. Want to join us?"

"I can't," he said, without even thinking about it, his voice filling with instinctive feigned regret. He gestured at his desk, the computer monitor, the entire room, trying to mime _too busy, terribly sorry, maybe another time_.

Cameron wasn't buying it. "Come on. It'll be fun," she cajoled.

Wilson really doubted it. "I don't know," he said. "I still have a lot to catch up on—"

"It'll keep, I promise."

The indecision hovered between them, spinning like a flipped coin in mid-air. He cringed.

Cameron smiled. "Please?"

"Maybe just one drink," he hedged.

"Great!" she said, with far more excitement than the situation warranted. "We'll meet you out front at six." At the door, she turned back to him. "If you're not there, I'll come find you."

Wilson figured it wasn't an accident that this sounded like a threat. He stared at his desk, sighed, and resolved to at least drive separately.

He didn't have to worry, as it turned out; House's fellows wanted to walk to a pub near the campus, one they'd obviously been to before, dimly lit and full of the boisterous post-work happy-hour crowd from the hospital and nearby university. He followed them to a booth near the back. For some reason, it amused him to think of them socializing outside of work hours, but it also made him feel like a third wheel—even though technically he was the fourth, which should have made them even.

The fact that Cameron, Chase, and Foreman were all treating him like they expected him to snap at any moment didn't exactly help. Sure, he hadn't been his usual self lately, but that was hardly indicative of some kind of mental breakdown. He'd been through far more emotionally taxing situations. He'd been divorced three times, after all. Sending House to rehab was nothing.

He wondered how House was doing in there, anyway.

Wilson ordered a beer. He wanted something stronger, but checked himself when he considered how it might look in front of House's team, who were likely already anticipating just that sort of thing. They spent the first quarter of an hour talking about their latest case—an improbably named Romany teenager who may or may not have had Wegner's—all the while glancing at him out of the corner of their eyes, expectant, gauging his reaction. Just how pathetic did they think he was?

It was Foreman who ruptured the fragile layer of denial by finally asking Wilson what he knew about House's status.

"The rehab center has a seven-day blackout period upon admission," Wilson answered. "I haven't heard from him since I dropped him off."

"What's the place like?" Cameron asked.

"It's nice. It's ... different. They know about his leg and the pain, and they're equipped to take that into consideration."

"Right," Chase scoffed. "Like any American facility can understand the difference between dependency and addiction where chronic pain is concerned."

"It's a good facility," Wilson insisted, as much to remind himself as to convince Chase. It wasn't so much that he lacked faith in Sea Harbor. It was more a lack of faith in House. "They have an affiliation with a pain management clinic. They've treated patients like him before."

"How's the rat-sitting going?" Foreman asked Cameron with a distinct smirk. "Does he remind you of House?"

Cameron glared. "Steve and I get along fine. It has nothing to do with House."

"Oh, I don't know," Chase said. "I think they've got a lot in common. Gray hair, whiskers—"

"Known for spreading disease, pestilence, and misery," Foreman suggested.

A waitress came by to offer them a second round. Wilson decided to go for the hard stuff after all.

"He could be in agony," he said, one hour and several drinks later, his head braced by his hands, both elbows on the table. "I don't—I don't know. They _said_ they'd take care of him, but who knows what they're actually doing? They could be detoxing him on nothing: no suboxone, no methadone, _nothing_."

"This is happy hour," Chase advised, shooting him a wary look. "Maudlin hour starts at ten."

"I know. I'm sorry. I can't help it. It's just—I don't know what he's going through right now. I can't be there. I can't oversee his treatment." He laughed, a little bit maniacally. "He was finally willing to get help and I can't even find out if he's actually getting it."

"I'm sure he's fine," Cameron said, putting a hand on his shoulder and unsubtly sliding his half-empty drink out of his reach. Apparently he was once more forgiven—and all it had taken was a pathetic public meltdown. She really did have a thing for the broken ones.

"You're an oncologist," Foreman, ever the pragmatist, reminded him. "You've had training in palliative care. If you're that worried, just call or drive out there. They're not going to turn you away; you're a specialist."

"I know. I know. But I can't—micromanage. This is _his_ thing," Wilson said, gesticulating wildly. "God, I need another drink—where is our server?" He stood, wobbling only slightly. "I'll be right back."

He walked to the bar with what he considered to be impressive grace and composure under the circumstances. Once there, he nodded coolly at the bartender, received an answering nod, and waited patiently for his turn.

He leaned on a bar stool, then turned to his left and met the gaze of the woman sitting next to him.

"Hi," he blurted without thinking.

"Hi," she said, half smiling and looking at him from under long, dark eyelashes.

He looked away, tapped his fingers on the bar top, and with nothing else to do, looked back.

The woman cocked her head. "What are you drinking?" she asked.

Wilson opened his mouth to answer, and then shut it, suddenly ashamed. It didn't last long. "Scotch."

The woman smiled. "Tough day?"

"Tough winter," he answered. "I mean—it's been a difficult week."

The bartender showed up at their end and took his order. The woman nodded in sympathy. "And no family to go home to. I don't blame you for coming here."

He followed her gaze and glanced down at his empty ring finger, token ID of single men everywhere. He frowned. "Actually, I'm married."

The woman leaned a little closer, revealing tantalizing cleavage. House, for all his questionable virtues, was sorely lacking in that department. Of course, he made up for the loss in other ways. "Does she know you're out here drinking all alone?"

Wilson's drink arrived. He took a long, burning swallow and then smiled with relief. "He, actually. And yes, he probably does." A moment later he added, "He's in rehab."

The woman blinked, slowly sat up straight, and backed away. "I'm sorry," she said mildly. "My mistake."

"No problem," he answered, waving awkwardly as she backed away.

He finished the rest of his drink in a single gulp and decided to go home early.

But home was still House's apartment, sans House, and he fell into a tumultuous and unsettled sleep, thrashing in the big, empty bed as if his skin were too tight for his body. He'd always enjoyed sleeping with another person, since his very first marriage. He found it comforting. Falling asleep to the rhythm of another person's breathing, knowing that if he woke in the middle of the night, he could reach out and touch the back or shoulder of someone he loved—there was something wonderful about that.

Now he tossed and turned, sweating out the alcohol, and when he finally slept it was only to jolt awake a few scant hours later, shivering, having dreamed of House losing the trial and being sent to prison. Losing his license to practice medicine. Losing everything.

It took a long time for him to catch his breath and remember that that nightmare was behind them.

* * *

House had officially left Chase in charge before heading to rehab, either in deference to the fact that he'd been there longer than the others, or to apologize for giving him a black eye for Christmas—or possibly some combination of both. Wilson had faith in Chase's abilities as a doctor and a department leader, but that didn't stop him from checking in from time to time. House's department always had the weird cases, which meant they had the interesting cases. Working on them, or at least observing, had long been a highlight of Wilson's job, and now with House out of reach, sitting in on diagnostic sessions made him feel somehow connected to his absent friend—and spouse.

Cameron was holding the chart when Wilson walked into the room.

"He's a firefighter," she was saying. "Last year he suffered third-degree burns over half his body. He got to the ER last night disoriented and shivering, with his temperature bouncing between 96 and 102. Tox screen was clean; negative for Hep C, TB, HIV, and Lyme disease."

"A hypothalamic tumor can cause vacillating temperatures," Wilson suggested.

"MRSA is more likely," Foreman said. "He was in a burn unit for six months, multiple skin grafts—he could easily have caught an infection then."

"We should start him on Vancomycin and broad gram-negative coverage," Chase agreed.

Wilson couldn't help smiling as he watched them work. The familiarity was a strange sort of comfort. Knowing that they were functioning just fine on their own, without House's influence, was reassuring. At least somebody was doing okay.

He returned to his own office, so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn't notice until after he'd shut the door behind him and switched on the light that he was not alone. He jumped, his heart leaping into his chest as he saw the figure lurking behind his desk. Tritter glanced up at Wilson's exclamation of surprise, seemingly unfazed.

"What are you _doing_ here?" Wilson demanded, advancing toward him. "How did you get in?"

"Door was unlocked." Tritter shrugged, standing behind Wilson's desk like he belonged there, affecting the same methodical, smug confidence that had been so unnerving since their first meeting. This time, though, Wilson sensed that something was off about the act. Tritter was visibly on edge.

"You can't just barge into my office," Wilson said. "What's this about? The trial is over, if you hadn't noticed."

Tritter half smiled at him, cold and amused. "I noticed," he said. "In fact, I got a little reminder about it yesterday." He reached into his pocket and Wilson tensed automatically, waiting for the worst.

Tritter withdrew his hand from his pocket and offered a slip of paper. Wilson had to step forward and lean over his desk to snatch it from between the cop's fingers.

_Suck on this_, the note said. House's scrawl was familiar even from just those few letters.

"Do you know what something like that looks like to a cop?" Tritter asked, his tone deliberately casual, strolling around the desk to Wilson's side of the room.

"A come-on?" Wilson guessed.

"It looks like escalation," Tritter continued, ignoring him. "It looks like a threat."

"You're not serious," Wilson said. He held the note between his fingers and his thumb. "You think this is a _threat_?"

Tritter was standing directly in front of him now, looming over him, his face dark and impassive. "I think your boyfriend doesn't know how to keep his big mouth shut," he said, a trace of a snarl creeping into his voice.

Wilson stared back at him, hard, refusing to step down or move away. He kept his own voice low and steady. "Now who's making threats?"

They matched eyes for a long moment. Tritter smirked. He stepped past Wilson, bumping Wilson's shoulder in the process.

"Don't get too comfortable," he said with his hand on the doorknob. "This isn't over."

After Tritter left, leaving the door open behind him, Wilson let go of an uneasy sigh of relief. He scanned his desk to make sure nothing had been taken—or left behind. Then he sat heavily in his chair.

The cop had got one thing right. This was far from over.

* * *

By Thursday, Wilson was so stressed out that he gave up on seeing patients. He had his assistant rearrange his schedule and then sequestered himself in his office to work on backlogged paperwork until Cuddy came knocking at three o'clock.

"I'm sorry," he said as she let herself in. "I—I don't feel well. I thought I could get some stuff done here. In private."

She smiled gently at him and sat in a chair across from his deck—a chair House had actually sat in while giving him a memorable blowjob just a few weeks earlier, he recalled. God.

"Have you heard anything?" she asked.

"There's a seven-day blackout at the center," he explained once again. "I won't know until Monday."

"Why don't you take some time off? It's almost the weekend; you haven't taken more than a couple of days since—"

"What would I do?" He dropped the pen he'd been holding with a little more force than necessary. "Rearrange the bookshelves? Work on my memoirs?"

"Have dinner with me."

He paused. "What about the other twenty-three hours each day?"

Cuddy gave him a look. "Just tonight. It'll be fun," she promised.

Wilson bristled. He'd heard that before. "Why does everybody think I'm _lonely_ all of a sudden?" He peered at her. "Have you been talking to Cameron?"

"Not any more than normal," she said. "Why?"

"Nothing. I can't. I have—" To get these patients into clinical trials. To clean out House's refrigerator. To catch up on the TiVo. "Stuff to do."

"You can't take an hour out of your busy social schedule to eat?"

"Are you mocking me?"

"Obviously," she laughed. "Come on, Wilson. You and I both know you have no plans for the evening. Besides," she added, "he's my employee. And my friend. And so are you, as far as I know ..."

"I should start a newsletter," Wilson muttered.

As it turned out, she made a very persuasive argument, even if it did involve the threat of illegally docking his salary. At least she picked a good restaurant. And Cuddy could be an excellent entertainer; schmoozing was a part of her job.

Wilson, on the other hand, was a terrible entertainer under the circumstances. "I'm sorry I'm such lousy company," he finally said after the fourth or fifth silence lasting more than two unbroken minutes. "Though you can't say I didn't warn you."

"Well, it was either you or Ryan Seacrest to keep me entertained tonight," Cuddy sighed. "I went with the straighter option. Besides, it's nice to sit with someone and not have to force conversation. You already work for me, so it's not like either of us needs to impress the other." She narrowed her eyes at him. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine. It's weird. The apartment, I mean, and him not being there. I feel like I'm house sitting." He laughed uncomfortably. "Except without—yeah."

"Tell you what," Cuddy said, "I'll buy the next round of drinks if you promise to never make that awful pun again."

"I'm sure he's fine," Wilson said, not sure who he was trying to convince. "I know it won't be easy, but he's been through worse—he's going to be fine."


	4. Chapter 4

He nearly didn't make it to the toilet the first two times the nausea overcame him.

By the third time, he wasn't even trying anymore.

He had known what to expect, more or less. The misery and sickness were familiar from previous times he'd gone off his meds for a short while. But knowing what was coming was not enough to prepare him for it now. Time had dulled the memories to distant horrors. And of course, those experiences had been temporary. A day, maybe a few days.

But not this time.

This time, detox was like having stones piled on him, one at a time, until the weight was so great he couldn't breathe. Slow suffocation, with the addition of sharp breakthrough pain—no matter what the literature said, their meds did jack shit to help with that—for seven days, during which he had no contact with the world outside Sea Harbor. Not that it would have made a difference. He could scream at the rehab security guards just as easily as he could have screamed at Wilson.

He spent the days vomiting until there was nothing left to choke up. Then he spent them dry heaving, wondering how long he could keep this up before dehydration forced the rehab drones to put him on fluids. He didn't sleep. When he did manage to pass out, he'd wake up a few hours later covered in sweat, tangled in soaking wet sheets, shivering even as his body burned. In some ways, this was preferable to actually sleeping; his dreams were worse than his waking reality.

Every day, a nurse brought him out of his room, and he was shuffled to the Sea Harbor clinic, where he was poked at by their doctors, his vitals taken, apparently so they could verify that he was suffering enough. The questions never changed, and neither did his answers. How was he feeling? Like death nuked in a microwave. He went through the motions in a fugue state.

On the third day, he started looking for sharp objects.

The first time he'd gone off the pills cold turkey, he'd broken his hand with a stone pestle. In December, cut off from Vicodin and desperate, he'd taken a razor to his arm.

A butter knife swapped from the Sea Harbor cafeteria could barely cut Wednesday night's mystery meat, never mind his skin, and he couldn't get back into the kitchen to search for anything sharper. The clinic was guarded by security who were implacable when it came to bribery.

Finally, he unscrewed the bulb from the table lamp in his room and, realizing they'd never give him another, broke it against a table. The jagged shards of glass made dangerous, irregular, bloody marks on the underside of his forearm, tender flesh that had only recently healed. He had to grit his teeth to keep from shouting as he carved himself up, but for a brief moment, it worked, and he gasped in ecstatic relief as the new pain flared up to block out the familiar old pain of his leg.

He hid some of the better pieces under the mattress, knowing he'd need them later, when the fresh wounds healed and his leg took over again. The following morning the clinic nurses discovered his lacerated arm; when he was allowed back in his room later that day, he no longer had a lamp, and there wasn't so much as a splinter of glass to be found anywhere.

The one upside was that the daily visits to the clinic were the only human contact he was forced to have. For the first week there were no mandatory meetings or therapy sessions to attend, so the other twenty-three hours of each day could be spent however he liked, relatively speaking.

Within a few days, though, House was so desperate for a distraction—something, _anything_—that he found himself actually making an appointment with Friedman. He'd have to go through this at some point, anyway, he reasoned—why not get it over with?

She was bright and cheerful again when he went to her office. It seemed to be her default demeanor. House was naturally suspicious of happy people, and he kept this in mind as he took a seat.

"How have you been so far?" she asked him with cloying concern.

"Never better," he said with a voice raw from screaming, burned by bile.

"The first few days are often the worst," she acknowledged. "At least you know you can look forward to things getting easier?"

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from lunging across the desk at her.

"So," she said, tapping her pen twice on the yellow legal pad in front of her. "Tell me about what happened to your leg."

"Tragic mechanical bull-riding accident."

Friedman smiled and looked down at the open file folder in front of her. "According to your records—"

"You already know what happened to my leg."

"I know the bare medical facts. I'd still like to hear your take on things. I want to know how it affected _you_."

House couldn't decide if the woman was an idiot or just disingenuous. He gave her a look, and then lifted his cane and waved it back and forth.

"Yes, I know," Friedman said patiently. "But I'm talking about the emotional aspects of what happened. You experienced a tremendous change, Greg. And that's when your Vicodin use started, which is what brought you here. What you were feeling at that time could tell us a lot. So please—indulge me. Let's start from the beginning. You started experiencing severe pain in your thigh muscle. You went to the hospital. What happened then?"

House stared at her, keeping his expression calm while his fingers tightened on the armrests of his chair. All these years later, he should have been used to having this part of his life laid out like an exhibit at a museum. The worst thing to ever happen to him, the lowest point in his life, recited like lines in a play—to a lecture hall full of hapless students, to a boardroom full of cool-faced physicians, to a courtroom full of curious spectators, to a social worker he'd never met in his life. How he'd gone to the hospital in sudden, inexplicable agony and been dismissed as an addict and a phony. How he'd been the only one to figure out what was happening inside him. How Stacy ...

"How long did you have to wait before you were given pain medication?"

"I wasn't _given_ pain medication," House answered. "Not the first time. I _took_ it and injected myself. When the pain came back, they catheterized me for half an hour before treating—because if a guy can handle taking a rubber hose up his dick, he must actually be for real."

Friedman, to her credit, winced in sympathy. "They thought you were just trying to get drugs."

"I'm a damn _doctor_. If I wanted to score some narcotics, there are easier ways than faking leg pain."

"According to this," Friedman said, tapping her file, "you spent three days in the hospital before the correct diagnosis was made. It also says that you were the one who finally made the diagnosis. You must have been completely out of your head—"

"And still figured it out before any of those idiots."

"That's impressive."

House snorted. "No, it's not. What's impressive is the amount of incompetence required to let a patient suffer for three days without a diagnosis."

"We don't have to keep talking about this if it upsets you," Friedman offered, her voice measured and gentle.

"It doesn't upset me," he said, beating a hasty retreat from that precipice of anger.

"If it didn't upset you, you wouldn't be a human being."

"Surprise," he spat.

* * *

He tried reading, but everything bored him: back issues of the _NEJM_, the pulp trash in what passed for a library at Sea Harbor, a week-old _TV Guide_. At night, there were "inspirational" movies that only made him feel sicker, although he did think that _The Shawshank Redemption_ was a particularly apt choice, given the setting. Daytime television in the lounge kept him occupied for a few hours, until a heroin junkie with tattooed knuckles offered to pummel him if he tried to change the channel from _Family Feud_ to _General Hospital_ again.

After that, he just watched people: the cokeheads and the speed freaks, the housewives and the prep school dropouts and someone he thought he recognized as a former child TV star from the '80s, all in various stages of screwed-up-ness. On the fifth day, the purple-haired monster from the clinic got into a brawl with the _Family Feud_-loving junkie, which was entertaining for a few minutes, particularly when the girl punched the junkie square in the face and broke his nose before snatching back the iPod he'd swiped from her room.

And why was he doing this? Tritter, the threat of prison, and oh, yeah: James fucking Wilson, who had forced him to write his own Vicodin prescriptions, who had ratted him out, who—surprisingly—gave really great head, not that House could remember anything anymore other than excruciating pain. Wilson, his best friend, whose patience with House had pretty much run out. House wasn't sure which was more debasing: going to rehab to appease Tritter, or going to appease Wilson. What the hell had he been thinking?

He went back to see Friedman, aching with pain and almost choking on his own anger.

Friedman's expression was still cheerfully bland. "What happened after you diagnosed your own infarction?"

"It's all in the chart."

"Yes. You were placed in a chemically induced coma, during which you underwent surgery to remove the damaged tissue."

"That's what it says."

"I need more than that, Greg. I need to know how this affected you—"

"You want to know how this affected me? I had a _life_ before this. I had a body that worked." He grabbed at his thigh, fingers pressing hard against his jeans and the mutilated flesh and muscle beneath.

"You went through a terrible loss. It's normal and healthy to feel anger over what happened. To feel grief. To look for an outlet for those feelings. To look for someone to blame. You felt betrayed," Friedman continued.

"Yes, I felt betrayed!" His fingers curled into a fist and his arm tensed, aching to throw a punch at someone, or something. "Stacy knocked me out and then played Operation with my comatose body. She deliberately disregarded my instructions based on the medical advice of a _total stranger_. I could have come out of this with full use of my leg. I might have been in pain, but at least I could have _walked_."

Friedman was silent, apparently waiting for him to continue. When he didn't, she asked, "What happened when you woke up?"

House ground his teeth in silent fury and willed his heart to stop racing. "I was in the hospital for a week."

"Where they had you on Vicodin as a result of the surgery. It's a common post-operative analgesic."

"You don't even need me to be here," House marveled insincerely.

Friedman smiled and jotted something down on her legal pad. "I understand that you were in the hospital for three days before you checked yourself out, against medical advice. What happened after that?"

"I went home."

"What was that like? I imagine you had to make quite a few adjustments."

"A contractor came in to add safety bars to the shower."

Friedman nodded. "How about personal adjustments?"

He looked away from her and stared at a potted fern on a bookshelf, remembering, the anger draining out of him, leaving him feeling empty and cold. "Stacy was always there. Hovering. She felt guilty. She wanted to make everything better again."

"How did you feel about her then?"

He hesitated, wavering about whether to give up this much. But what was the point in holding back? It hadn't taken long for him to figure out that Friedman would just keep asking.

"I hated her," he said. "I hated everything about her. She was ... clumsy and awkward. She didn't know what to do. And I punished her for it every day." He stopped. "My mother flew out. She insisted on staying and I didn't have any excuse to send her away. I couldn't work. I was treated like a patient. Cuddy offered me a job at the hospital. A pity offer. Everyone treated me like a cripple." He shrugged. "I _was_ a cripple. Kind of hard to forget it."

"You must have had to go through rehabilitative therapy."

"It was bullshit. I stopped going."

Friedman wrote something else on her legal pad. House snorted.

"Let me guess," he said, "PT is going to solve all my problems."

"Not _all_ of your problems," Friedman said, continuing to write. "After all, Greg, you're a man with quite a lot of interesting problems."

* * *

She sent him away.

To art therapy.

Half a dozen Sea Harbor inmates sat around what looked like a preschool art lab, studiously working on what might have been coloring books or Sunday school assignments. Paint-by-numbers. House scowled.

"Hi!" a voice boomed, and a bearded man approached from the back of the room. "I'm Ted," he introduced himself.

"Greg," House simpered, but the man seemed oblivious to the mockery.

"Let's get you set up with some colored pencils," Ted said, excitement in his voice.

When he turned, House rolled his eyes and bailed.

* * *

"Take a moment and focus on your breathing," the diminutive ... therapist, pixie, demon, whatever she was ... in the next room said, sitting lotus-style on the floor in leotard and tights with her eyes closed. "Breathe in, breathe out. Inhale and exhale."

"You're shitting me," House said.

The woman opened one green eye and peered at him through it. "I don't think we've met. Welcome to mindfulness training. I'm Clarissa."

"They _pay_ you for this?"

Clarissa shot him a wounded glance, this time with both eyes. "You must be Greg. I've heard a lot about you."

House sneered at her. "Only good things, I hope."

She smiled then and gestured for him to join her and the other half-dozen inmates on the floor. "Are you familiar with the concept of mindfulness, Greg?"

"Mindfulness, no. Mind_less_ness I get to work with every day."

"Mindfulness means focusing your mind on what you're experiencing in the present, without judgment or analysis. It's about accepting where you are, being in the moment."

"And this is supposed to do what? Aside from justify your paycheck, I mean."

"The treatment of addiction is dependent upon the maintenance of your physical, mental, _and_ spiritual well-being," Clarissa explained. "So is the treatment of pain. Mindfulness can help patients come to accept chronic pain, which lessens suffering."

"So your job is to tell people to suck it up and deal. Nice work if you can get it."

The other patients were starting to shift uncomfortably on the floor. Clarissa sighed. "Mr. House, these exercises—"

"No, I get it," he said, waving his cane to punctuate. "It's the ultimate meta commentary on the rehab process: _nothing works_, so just get over it. Getting people to fork over thousands of dollars to hear it, though—now that's an impressive racket. And I thought I had it good."

"Mr. House," Clarissa said quietly, "if you can't moderate this behavior, I'm going to have to ask you to leave until you can."

He figured it would be too much to assume she meant rehab altogether, but he took what he could get and headed back to the relative privacy of his room, leaning heavily on the cane, gritting his teeth.

Wilson liked to play psychologist with him, but deep down he was just as much of a cynical bastard as House, and the charade never lasted long. House wondered, as he flopped backwards onto the bed, what Wilson would have to say about _mindfulness_.

"Wait till they send you to needle therapy," said a voice from the doorway.

House lifted his head just enough to determine that it was the same girl from the clinic—Sugar Ray Robinson from yesterday's fistfight—before letting it drop to the bed again. "Acupuncture," he corrected.

"Whatever. They stick a bunch of needles in like your face and stuff and it's supposed to make you not want to take drugs anymore. It's totally sick."

"That sounds counterintuitive," House mused to the ceiling.

"Yeah. After that you'll wish you were with practicing breathing with Clarissa, trust me."

A few moments passed, during which House kneaded the dead muscle in his thigh and forgot about Sugar Ray completely, until she spoke again.

"So you're, like, a doctor?"

"Yes. I'm _like_ a doctor."

"What kind?"

No witty retorts sprang to mind. He rubbed harder at his leg. "Diagnostician. I figure out what's wrong with people when nobody else can."

"Do you ever get to do cool shit? Like brain surgery or something?"

House rolled his head to the side with only minimal effort on his part until he could see the girl. She was loitering in his doorway, leaning against the jamb and picking at her nails, which, like her hair, were purple.

"Everything I do is cool. I get to cut people, stab people, poke around in people's gray matter, drain their blood, pump them full of chemicals, and generally keep them alive."

"Do you always keep them alive?"

"Sometimes." House leveled a stare at her. "At least I used to."

Sugar Ray stared back and then scratched the top of her head. "Used to?"

He gazed up at the ceiling. "Until they sent me here."

He turned his head and the girl was gone. He wanted to close the door behind her, but the distance from his position on the bed seemed as insurmountable as Everest. The pain in his leg rose from a low burn to an inferno, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before looking futilely around the room. Right then, if he could have found something sharp enough—if they had left him anything sharp enough—he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop at the first layer of skin.


	5. Chapter 5

The weekend came, and with nothing else to do and no desire to go back to the apartment, Wilson continued to spend as much time at the hospital as he could. He was given a good reason on Saturday night; the worst snowstorm of the season plus a short-staffed ER meant he was obliged to stay late to pitch in, something he was more than happy to do. The ER was a scene of barely organized chaos when he arrived. A chart was immediately shoved into his hands, and he started working through the line of patients with mild to moderate injuries.

"Hannah Morgenthal?" he called, and a wet, bloodied teenager tentatively approached.

"Do you know what's going on with my mom?" she asked. "They took her somewhere."

"I just got here," Wilson admitted, "but we can find out about her as soon as we get you checked out and make sure everything's okay."

Space was hard to come by in the crowded emergency room, and privacy was even scarcer, but Wilson directed the girl to a spare bed and went to work. The scrapes and contusions on her face he'd deal with; first priority was the bleeding puncture wound in the middle of her left thigh. He winced in sympathy.

"This is probably going to sting," he warned as he began to dab at the wound.

"_Ow_," she said, shifting her leg—in the wrong direction.

Wilson paused, staring at the wound on the girl's leg and processing this anomaly. He looked up at her face. As if on cue, she grimaced.

"So," he said, continuing to clean the injury as if there was nothing unusual happening, "how old are you, Hannah?"

"Sixteen," she said. She moved her leg again. Not involuntarily.

"You go to school around here?"

"South Brunswick," the girl answered, distracted. "Can you hurry? I want to see my mom."

"I'm going as fast as I can," Wilson said. "Are there any ... pre-existing conditions ... that I should know about?"

"No," Hannah said. "What conditions?"

Wilson met her eyes, seeing the defensiveness and fear hiding beneath their surface. "I was hoping you could tell me."

She broke their gaze and looked away first. "I'm fine. I just need some gauze or something."

Wilson nodded. "All right. Just let me put this on you and then we'll get a bandage. This won't hurt at all," he continued, soaking a sheet of gauze in the exact same antiseptic he'd just used. He wiped the gauze over the bloody gash in the girl's leg. She didn't even flinch. Wilson tossed the bloody gauze into the biohazard bin.

"Hannah, I think you have a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain. You've heard this before, haven't you?"

Now, the girl flinched. "No," she said. "I don't know what you're talking about. I want to see my mom."

"I know," Wilson said. "But you were in a car accident—you could have any number of internal injuries that we can't see and you can't feel. We need to get you checked out before you can visit your mom."

"I'm _fine_," Hannah insisted. "Don't I look fine?" She gestured with her arms, indicating that she was healthy. Her voice was getting gradually louder and more agitated.

"You look scratched up, but we don't know what's going on inside—"

"I want to see my mom!"

"I'll find out what's going on with your mom," Wilson suggested, "if you'll let me do just a few more tests to make sure you're okay."

The girl looked like she was going to continue to fight him, but then she sagged with defeat. "I just want to see her," she said quietly.

"If we can get you in to see her, we will," Wilson promised, waving down a nurse to get her to an X-ray. Somehow, he didn't think Hannah would get there without an escort. "I'll find out where she is, all right?"

Hannah gave him a hateful, suspicious glare, but hopped off the bed and followed the nurse down the hall. Wilson watched until they turned a corner, and then he discarded his gloves and returned to triage to find someone who could check on the status of Mrs. Morgenthal.

There was always the possibility that he was wrong, of course, except that Hannah had made it fairly obvious that she knew she had CIPA. It had to have been caught when she was a child, if not during infancy. Otherwise, she never would have survived to sixteen.

A life without pain—without any kind of warning that something was physically wrong. House, who felt pain all the time even though _nothing_ was wrong, might have found it appealing.

At the desk, a nurse handed him another patient's chart. Only after it was in his hand did she glance up at him. "Oh, Dr. Wilson," she said with a note of surprise. "How is Dr. House?"

Wilson tried not to sigh. He'd lost count of how many people had asked after House. Cameron, he was fairly certain, had asked no less than ten times since Monday. "He's fine. He's out of contact," he admitted once more. "It's the policy at the center for the first seven days. He's probably detoxing. I'm sure it's fine," he said, realizing all at once that he was babbling. "It's fine. I'll hear from him on Monday."

* * *

House made him wait until Wednesday.

Actually, House might have made him wait forever, but when Monday and Tuesday came and went without a word from Sea Harbor, Wilson started to get nervous. Also, annoyed. He couldn't go more than a few hours at work without someone else asking him whether he'd heard from House lately. Doctors, nurses, administrators, janitorial staff, and even a few of Wilson's regular patients—which was disconcerting, to say the least—all seemed to be immensely concerned about the status of Princeton-Plainsboro's least favorite physician, in one way or another, and it fell to Wilson to tell each of them that actually, he had no idea what his friend-slash-spouse was doing, which, aside from being disruptive to his work habits, also didn't reflect well on him personally. He was tired of trying to explain the week-long blackout period at the rehab center to various and sundry, about as tired as he was of having friends and colleagues look at him like he was some sort of monster for not knowing exactly how House was doing.

On Wednesday morning, when the little girl who lived across the hall from House's apartment asked where the man with the cane was, Wilson decided it was time to find that out for himself.

Before leaving for the day, he stopped by Diagnostics, where Chase was now holding forth. He glanced over at Wilson.

"How is he?" Chase asked.

"I don't know," Wilson admitted. "I'm on my way there now. How's your patient?"

"Broken heart syndrome," Chase explained.

"His elevated estrogen level and male menopause made him vulnerable; stress is leading to myocardial infarctions," Foreman said.

"We've already tried beta-blockers and nitroglycerin," Cameron added. "No improvement."

"We're running out of ideas," Chase said quietly.

"I know who might have some new ones," Wilson said.

It was as good an excuse to depart as any, so he took it and ran.

House was in the residential part of the facility when Wilson arrived, slumped on a couch in a common room while all around him others played card games and watched _Wheel of Fortune_ with varying degrees of interest. They were a motley group of patients of various stripes, skewing toward the wealthy and privileged end of addiction. Sea Harbor wasn't cheap. The canned applause and the clicking of the spinning wheel nearly drowned out the occasional murmur from the card players; it did nothing to muffle the distant sound of someone screaming from the direction of where Wilson knew the residents' sleeping quarters were located.

As for House: his eyes were grayer than Wilson had ever seen them. His clothes—t-shirt and track pants—looked rumpled and slept-in and possibly worn multiple times since their last encounter with a washing machine. The shirt bore a stain that hadn't been there the last time Wilson had seen it.

House was also smoking a cigarette, pinching it between his index finger and thumb like a joint. Wilson stumbled a bit at the sight, realizing that this development was, at least in part, designed solely to piss him off. If he were a podiatrist, he wondered if House would have taken up wearing high heels.

House didn't look surprised to see him, which was understandable: Wilson had been forced to stop and check in at the front desk, and House had probably been informed of his presence then. But House also didn't look remotely pleased to see Wilson, even after nine days, and in spite of everything, that stung.

"Hi," Wilson said, standing uneasily in front of him. When House didn't answer, he added, "You didn't call," and then, after waiting for an explanation that never came, "Mind if I sit?"

"Suit yourself," House said, a noticeable rasp in his voice.

Wilson eyed the empty space on the couch next to House. Then he grabbed a chair, dragged it closer to the couch, and sat down on it. House still didn't speak. "What do they have you on?"

He watched House take a long drag from the cigarette. "Eighty milligrams of methadone each morning. It's not enough by half."

"You have to give it time—"

"Fuck off," House sneered.

Wilson sucked in a breath and held it, counting to five, ignoring the acrid sting of cigarette smoke as he inhaled. "You're transitioning from Vicodin to methadone. There's going to be a period of adjustment—"

"No, seriously," House said. "I get enough of the patronizing pep talks from the people who work here; I don't need any from _you_. Save it for your damn patients."

Wilson tensed, watching House smoke. He had known that House would be like this, but that foreknowledge didn't make experiencing it any easier. He waited a minute before asking, "Where did you get cigarettes?"

"Prison barter system. A blowjob will get you ten."

Wilson didn't know whether to be relieved at the joke or not. "So you've amassed several hundred by now, I suppose."

House put the cigarette back between his lips and smirked. Wilson stared at him: sallow eyes, face knotted with pain, defiant, and joking about blowjobs—and fuck it all, he _wanted_ House, wanted him desperately. House was angry and he was miserable, but he was still House, who Wilson had wanted for _years_. Who he'd been willing to marry, even when it had seemed like their very friendship was fractured beyond repair. Wilson gripped the sides of his chair and looked away. "Your team sends their regards," he offered.

"Regards I don't need. Good drugs, on the other hand—"

"They have a young male patient with Broken Heart Syndrome—don't ask, I know it's weird," Wilson said. "He's suffering heart attacks every time the woman he loves walks into his room. They've already tried nitroglycerin and beta-blockers to no effect. What do you think—antidepressants?"

"Antidepressants would speed up the heart attacks," House answered. "They're idiots."

"Yes, well, of course, no doctor on earth could match your skill and wisdom," Wilson said. "On the other hand, you're in _court-ordered rehab_, so I guess the sick people of the world will have just to take their chances with the rest of us incompetent imposters."

"Oh, _ouch_," House said.

"Propylthiouracil?" Wilson suggested.

House frowned and his eyes went distant. Wilson felt a bit giddy at the sight of him actually focusing on a medical problem. Maybe rehab was actually working.

"Propylthiouracil affects the thyroid," House said. "Weakens the heart."

"Blood thinners?"

"His brain is chemically attacking his heart," House said. "Blood thinners won't help with that."

"So treat the brain, not the heart."

House was quiet. "EST," he finally said.

"You want them to try _electroshock therapy_?"

"Basic brain chemistry," House answered. "Interrupt protein synthesis, alter the neurotransmitter system—no memories, no heart-attack-causing girlfriend."

Wilson ran both hands through his hair and heard something in his shoulders crack. "I think you've been in the nuthouse too long. How is ... everything else?"

House had ducked his head when Wilson turned back. "What else?" he asked flatly.

"The facility—the doctors, the staff, the accommodations ..."

House took a long drag from his cigarette. The smoke wafted from his mouth and dissipated upward. Wilson wondered if the alarms in the room were up to code and made a mental note to check before he left. "It's Club Med," House said. "It's paradise. I'm never going to leave."

Down the hallway, the manic screaming started up again. House grimaced. "Another satisfied customer," he declared, tapping the cigarette on the armrest of the sofa and knocking ash and cinders to the floor.

"I think Cuddy wants to come out to see you," Wilson said. "God only knows why. How does next week sound?"

"Hold on," House said. "Let me check my busy schedule of _beating my head against a wall_."

"Is there anything—anything I can do?" Wilson asked, hating the desperation in his voice. "Or bring you?"

"Cake with a file in it? Getaway vehicle?" House huffed and puffed at the cigarette for a moment before sneering at Wilson. "No thanks. You've already done so much."

"No," Wilson said, already shaking his head. "No way. Do _not_ start that again. I didn't do this to you. I didn't make you come here, I didn't get you arrested, I didn't get you addicted to Vicodin to begin with—"

"Right!" House snapped, loud enough to distract several people from their nightly television or card games. "You're a saint! _God_, it's nice of you to descend from your pedestal to visit us druggies and criminals and fuck-ups—"

"I'm not saying I'm a saint! I'm not saying you're a fuck-up! We've been through this a hundred times—" Abruptly, Wilson cut himself off. They _had_ been through this a hundred times, and House knew the score as well as Wilson did. That wasn't what this was about. He took several slow, calming breaths and reminded himself that they'd already got past the difficult part: getting House admitted to rehab in the first place. Now all he had to do was weather the storm until the eight weeks were up and House was finally clean—and clear.

And really, if House _hadn't_ been behaving like a Grade A jackass, _that_ would have been cause for concern.

"You're going to be fine," Wilson said in a low voice. "You're going to get through this just fine. I'll be back to see you soon." With that, he stood up and left.

There was a night nurse on duty and Wilson made a beeline for her. "Are you the person in charge here tonight?"

"Sir?"

"Greg House," Wilson said, glancing over his shoulder at House, who hadn't moved from his position on the sofa. "He's on methadone maintenance for opioid addiction and chronic pain. His dosage is too low."

"Sir—"

"I'm a doctor—an oncologist. I've practiced palliative medicine; I know what I'm talking about. I know you can't up the doses on your own, but I need you to relay that to the prescribing doctors on staff. He needs to be titrated up. He's in a lot of pain."

The nurse gave him a wary look. "I'll make a note of it and speak to my supervisors."

"Thank you." He turned to leave.

"Excuse me—sir? Aren't you Greg House's partner?"

It took him a moment to process the question, to translate it into terms he understood. _Partner._ "What? Oh ... yes. Yes." He wasn't sure how confident his answer sounded.

"James Wilson, right?"

"Yes," he said. "What does that have to do with—"

"Dr. Wilson, we're going to need you to start coming in for weekly counseling sessions while Mr. House is a patient here."

Wilson stood, gaping at the woman. "I'm not ... _on_ anything," he protested.

"I understand that. But we believe that drug dependency causes destructive changes for the families of addicts, as well as for the addicts themselves. We strongly recommend that significant others receive outpatient counseling alongside our residents. In your particular case, we feel it's necessary for Mr. House's recovery."

"My particular case?"

"Not only are you Mr. House's partner, you were also his prescribing physician."

"I—"

"How are Wednesdays for you? Same time? The sessions last two hours."

Wilson blinked. "Yes?"

"Perfect," the nurse beamed and made a mark on her clipboard. "I'll set up an appointment for you and we'll see you next Wednesday at five, okay?"

She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving him open-mouthed and still not entirely sure what had just happened, except that apparently he now had an appointment.

Damn it. He was going to rehab.


	6. Chapter 6

House waited fifteen minutes after Wilson left before picking up the public phone in the lobby and calling. In lieu of a greeting, Wilson shouted, "They want me to come in every week for a two-hour therapy session!"

"I ratted you out," House said. "If I have to suffer, you have to suffer, too."

"You didn't have to suffer!" Wilson yelled, and then exhaled in defeat. "No, you're right. They're right. I've been enabling you for years. I obviously have some ... things ... I need to work on."

"Addiction is a family disease," House informed him with all the fake sincerity he could muster.

"I hate you," Wilson answered, and hung up.

House grinned until it turned into a wince. Even the pleasure of fucking with Wilson—metaphorically, of course—didn't last long in the face of withdrawal. It was hitting him harder now without the distraction of a visitor to antagonize; that roller coaster was back on a downward plunge.

He lit another cigarette in defiance of the "No Smoking" sign hanging on the wall two feet to his left. He'd started smoking as much to piss Wilson off as to ease the cravings and to give his fingers and mouth something to do other than downing little white pills every few hours. It wasn't helping so much with the second part.

But the first part: god, it felt good to push Wilson's buttons and have him push right back. That was why he'd come here, after all, as often as he forgot it, or just tried to forget it: to salvage the only relationship in his life that stood a chance, the only relationship that mattered.

The only one that got him laid. Lip service to Sea Harbor was a small price to pay.

He tried to hang onto that as the pain radiated out from his leg, flowing through his body like lava. He could survive this. He could play their games, scam his way through, fake it, grin and bear it, feign breakthroughs about things he'd known about himself for years.

He was here now. He had no other choice.

* * *

His visits with Friedman continued. He'd evaluated her quickly in the time since his arrival and had concluded that she was just as useless as he'd expected. But she was also bullish and stubborn—albeit in an irritatingly cheerful way—traits that House, in his present condition, couldn't exactly challenge. He was trapped in this place for eight weeks, weakened by pain and ineffectual drugs. He was a strategist, and the best tactic now was to humor her—and, in the meantime, try not to go insane.

"Describe the pain to me," she said.

He answered by rote, so accustomed to answering this question, to justifying his need for Vicodin, that he didn't even have to think about it. "It's a constant burning sensation. On bad days, it's like sparks of electricity running through my leg. It never stops. Vicodin dulls the pain, lets me go to work and do my job."

"Which you do quite well, from what I understand. Your department has an outstanding record. Your reputation precedes you. You're so good at what you do, in fact, that your boss has let you keep your job in spite of a long history of disrespecting her authority, pissing off your patients, offending hospital donors and board members, and alienating your colleagues, a pattern of behavior that has only escalated over the years."

"Yes. I'll never be Homecoming King. What's your point?"

"Your recent trial." Friedman looked down, turned a page in the file in front of her, and read from the paper. "Among other things, you were charged with driving under the influence, resisting arrest, possession with intent to traffic, and prescription forgery."

"Would you believe it was a set-up?"

Friedman smiled. "Not likely."

"I forged the prescriptions. I wasn't driving under the influence. I wasn't trafficking or intending to traffic. And I forged the prescriptions because I was _in pain_, and they were scrips for a drug I had already been taking because it's the only drug that works. The rest of it is bullshit—including this," he said, gesturing around the room.

"You don't believe you need to be here." Friedman gave him a long, steady look. "So why did you come to rehab?"

"I heard the food was better here than in jail. Plus, I already have a husband. If I became someone's prison bitch, he might get jealous."

She didn't even miss a beat. "From what I understand, you likely weren't going to jail. You could have gone home without jail time _or_ rehab. Yet you volunteered this as an alternative—so there must be some other reason you're here today."

"Maybe I just love torturing myself."

"Maybe," said Friedman. "Or maybe it had something to do with realizing you were addicted to Vicodin?"

"It's not a problem," House said.

Friedman raised her eyebrows. "You don't think your drug addiction is a problem?"

"I've told you. I go to work. I do my job. I'm good at it. Without Vicodin, I'm in pain. I can't concentrate. I can't _work_."

"Job performance is a good barometer, Greg, but it's not the only one." Friedman tapped the point of her ink pen on her pad of paper and looked calmly at him. "This isn't the first time you've tried to get off Vicodin. Why don't you tell me a little bit about the ketamine treatment? How did that come about?"

House wasn't entirely certain how that _had_ come about; even now, the border between dream and reality was poorly defined in the recesses of his memory. "I was shot," he said simply. "I had surgery. Ketamine is an anesthetic that's also been used to treat chronic pain. Two birds, one big-ass needle."

"So you viewed ketamine as an alternative to Vicodin use?"

"I was trying to get out of pain," he snapped. "Vicodin had nothing to do with it."

"But you know the effect of long-term acetaminophen use on the body."

"I know it's killing me, if that's what you're asking."

"That doesn't seem to bother you."

"Everyone dies."

"Yes, but most people want to postpone that inevitability for as long as possible."

"Most people's legs don't hurt." House stared hard at her. "The biological imperative to survive doesn't exist in a vacuum. Human beings want life _quid pro quo_. We trade heart disease for big, greasy hamburgers. We accept a higher likelihood of lung cancer in exchange for the pleasure of inhaling toxins through little paper sticks. I'd rather live to sixty on drugs than live to ninety in pain. My life may be shorter, but I'll enjoy it more."

"Do you?" Friedman asked. "Enjoy life?"

"I enjoy it more when I'm _not in pain_."

Friedman stared at him long enough that his skin started to crawl. "You eventually relapsed and started using Vicodin again. For how long after the ketamine were you drug free?" she finally asked.

"For as long as I was pain free," he answered.

"And how long would that have been?"

"Eight, maybe ten weeks."

Friedman nodded. "What happened after those eight or ten weeks?"

He remembered all too well what happened when the ketamine had started to fail: how the mundane twinge of pain morphed into its old ugly self, the ache that seemed to spread throughout his entire body, occupying his every waking thought.

"The treatment wore off," he said bluntly. "It stopped working. The pain came back."

"So you got back on Vicodin. Which you obtained by forging your colleague's name to prescriptions," Friedman noted. "Why? Why do that, I mean, instead of just explaining the situation and getting a legitimate prescription?"

"My god," House said, "why didn't I think of that? Hey, Doctor Friedman, my leg hurts. Wanna write me a scrip?"

Friedman ducked her head and smiled again, this time apologetically. "I don't mean to irritate you with these questions. They're just some things for you to think about during the rest of your time here. I know that getting a Vicodin prescription isn't always easy. But I'm wondering why it is that someone in your profession—someone with your experience—would turn so quickly to prescription forgery."

"It wasn't that quick," House muttered.

"Oh?"

"I asked. I didn't just swipe his pad—I asked, and he said no."

"Dr. Wilson said no? Why would he do that?"

_Why indeed_, House thought. Wilson's rejection then still weighed on his mind, and if he was honest, the sting of being denied by his best friend when he needed Wilson most probably played in a role in his decision to go rogue and swipe Wilson's prescription pad.

That, and the fact that he'd been in _pain_.

"Sadistic streak. You should see him in the bedroom."

"Or maybe it was because he thought you weren't using your best judgment. It's not like you don't have a history of recklessness—"

"You've got me all figured out," House snapped. "Good job. If you already know everything about me, why do I need to be here? Call me back when it's time for me to commit myself to a higher power. I'm thinking Hendrix."

"We're not Narcotics Anonymous, Greg," Friedman said. "There's no need to give yourself over to anyone. And you're wrong—I don't have you all figured out. I've got your charts and medical records. I see indications that you may have an addictive personality. But _you_, on the other hand ..." She paused. "You are a mystery."

* * *

One of the ways in which Sea Harbor stood out from the pack—according to Wilson, who'd probably spent less than an hour there and was in no way qualified to judge—was its multiplicity and diversity of programs to help residents and outpatients alike.

House mused on whether this was really a selling point as he sat in art therapy once more, sculpting a cylindrical prescription bottle and a dozen tiny clay Vicodins to put inside it. His first effort—a human body mid-autopsy, complete with Y-incision and removable organs—had been deemed by Ted, the art therapist, to require too much clay, even after Sugar Ray had volunteered her own share to help complete the bowel.

"That's very interesting, Greg," Ted said now, looking on the collection of clay pills with bemused disappointment.

Earlier, he'd gone to yoga. He'd brought a bag of Cheetos. He could practically read the post-session report in Clarissa's measured, disapproving tone of voice: _Greg is not a team player; Greg is not taking this seriously_.

Three times a week, as the final session of each day, the forty or so patients at Sea Harbor were obliged to gather for nightly "affirmations." Once a month, they held the session outside in front of a bonfire, like some nightmarish summer camp. Under the guidance of a counselor, each person in attendance would take a turn to declare something positive about him or herself. House had yet to contribute. It was pathetic. People who had lost their jobs, their marriages, even custody of their kids to their drug problems, now struggling to find something meaningful in their lives. _I am a good person. I have friends who care about me. I'm getting better._ New-age hokum designed to convince people they could cure the incurable.

House stood aside, his weight on his good leg, and counted down the days until he could leave.

* * *

"I'd like to talk about the last time you were off Vicodin," Friedman said at the start of his next meeting with her. "In December."

"Knock yourself out," House said, waving an iPod and a pair of earbuds at her. "I'll just wait."

"I'd like us both to talk about it, if it's not too much trouble. If it is, we can always do this tomorrow. Of course, that could mean pushing your release date back to make up for the lost time." At House's glower, she continued. "December was an interesting month for you, wasn't it?"

"It's the most wonderful time of the year."

"Mmm. Not last year, not for you, anyway." She fell silent for a few moments, studying him, seemingly waiting for him to make some sort of outburst or confession. "You were off Vicodin for a while then, weren't you?"

"That's what happens when doctors let cops make medical decisions on their behalf."

"Tell me a bit about that experience."

House stared at her and then glanced around the room. "You're looking at it."

"Things were the same then as they are now?"

House considered it. There was a bit more vomiting now, proportionally. He shared this bit of knowledge with Friedman, who smiled.

"In my line of work, I often meet people who suffer from psychogenic pain," she began, and House's head was hitting the wall behind him before she even finished the sentence. "That's normal. Emotional upheaval is common in patients with chronic pain. Patients like yourself. Depression, anxiety—"

"In other words, it's all in my head," House said.

"Oh no, not at all. Not at all. Depression and anxiety are real disorders, Greg, and they can have a profound effect on pain." Friedman leafed through some papers in her lap. "I understand that you had some trouble with your shoulder last year. Why don't you tell me about that?"

House scowled, recalling a very similar discussion he'd had with Cuddy around then.

Friedman smiled. "I see you know what I'm getting at, don't you? Please don't be offended or think I'm dismissing your pain, Greg. Psychogenic pain is no easier to deal with than any other kind. It's very common for people who have experienced both kinds to medicate for both kinds. As I'm sure you know, studies have shown that pain and depression each worsen the other—"

"I know the difference between my leg hurting and being _sad_."

"How do you feel when your leg hurts?"

"Oh," House said, "you got me. When my leg hurts, I feel sad." He paused. "Of course, I also feel like someone is stabbing me in the thigh with an ice pick."

Friedman's face was apologetic. "I shouldn't have suggested that you can't tell the difference. I'm sorry. I can imagine how it must feel when people don't believe that you're actually in pain. That's what happened when you first had the infarction, isn't it? Nobody took you seriously. They all thought you were a liar, a drug addict. And by the time the truth came out, it was too late. The medical establishment let you down. Now, this is just a hunch, but I'm betting you didn't have a lot of respect for your fellow doctors and nurses even before this happened to you—and I'm sure the infarction didn't help."

"Not my fault the bar for med school graduation is so low."

Friedman frowned. "Didn't you actually get kicked out of med school before graduating?"

"How is _that_ relevant?"

"I have to say, Greg, that you have the most impressive ego of anyone I've ever met."

"Thank you."

"You think everyone else—everyone in the world—is an imbecile. Their opinions are beneath your consideration. It must be lonely at the top."

"I come down to hang with the plebes every now and then."

"So some people screwed up eight years ago, some of them strangers and some of them friends, and you just haven't trusted anyone since. I _guess_ that's a valid lifestyle choice ..."

"Are you here to psychoanalyze my personality, or my drug use? Because if it's the former, you're going to need a lot longer than eight weeks."

Friedman smiled ominously and said, "That can be arranged."


	7. Chapter 7

Wilson tossed the latest in a series of Vicodin bottles in the trash and wiped the sweat from his face with a shirtsleeve. They had been tucked into the nooks and crannies of the apartment so strategically that Wilson never would have found them if boredom hadn't forced him the sort of cleaning frenzy not commonly seen outside of methamphetamine users. He'd uncovered a set of pills hidden in a hollowed-out copy of the DSM-III, a pill caddy trapped between the mattress and box spring, and a stash inside the body of a dusty acoustic guitar at the back of the coat closet. House's place probably hadn't been this orderly since Stacy lived there, if then.

_Their_ place, he had to remind himself. He wasn't just looking after the apartment in House's absence. He lived here. With House.

It was hard to remember sometimes, although around the hospital, nobody seemed to have forgotten. The pleasure House took in offending people had made their public transition from friends to spouses and lovers almost unnervingly easy, at least for House. There weren't many people he hadn't told about their relationship, often in detail, some of it graphic and wholly inappropriate for ... well, for _anyone_, really. Wilson's staff had started giving him funny looks. He'd had to talk House down from sending out mock civil union announcements with the words WE'VE UNIONIZED emblazoned on the front and a picture of Samuel Gompers inside, but he couldn't be entirely sure that House hadn't sent them out anyway and that he wouldn't be getting a bewildered call from his mother any day now.

He was thinking about civil unions on the way to work when his phone buzzed.

"Hi, honey. How are the kids?"

Wilson shut his eyes, breathed out, and leaned back in the driver's seat of his car, sagging with relief and not a small amount of confusion. After seeing House in the throes of pain and withdrawal two days before, he now hardly recognized the voice on the other end of the line. "You're recycling material."

"I'm not recycling, I'm self-referencing. It's funnier now that I'm legally compelled to call you 'honey.'"

"Uh, _no_. That wasn't in any of the papers we signed."

"Yes it was. I wrote it in the margins just to annoy you."

"Do I need to call Howard?"

At the last meeting between Wilson, House, and the lawyers, at which House had signed away eight weeks of his life in exchange for the charges against him being dropped, Wilson had had the foresight to ask Howard if he also did divorces, just in case. Howard did not. More importantly, Howard never wanted to see either of them ever again. "Send a Christmas card," he'd dryly suggested. Wilson had kept Howard's contact information anyway and always kept it at hand, just in case he needed to back up a threat.

House was unfazed. "Chase kill anyone yet?"

"No, but give it time. House, they're fine. Let them do their jobs. By which I mean _your_ job."

"I bet you haven't even looked in the office. They've probably trashed the place. Toilet paper and empty beer cans everywhere—"

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a control freak?"

"Nobody's allowed to call me a control freak!"

"I take it they upped your methadone. Don't say I never did anything for you."

"That was you? You're saying I blew that pharm tech for nothing?"

"That was me. Bailing you out again."

"Hey, it's only fair. You're the one who got me stuck in here in the first place."

There was an edge to House's voice. Wilson opened his mouth to contest that issue once again, to run through the litany of ways in which this was Not His Fault, starting with the prescription forgeries, and immediately gave up. Instead, he rubbed at the headache that was starting to announce its presence. "I—" he started and then stopped. What came out of his mouth next was impossible, but somehow true. "I miss you."

There was a long silence, during which Wilson wondered if House was laughing at him. Finally the answer came in a rough voice. "I miss you, too."

Wilson smiled, his throat tight.

"You wouldn't believe how bad the food is," House continued by way of explanation. "And the sexual demands—don't even ask."

Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose. "I won't," he promised.

"Therapy's a riot. Narcissistic, self-obsessive—"

"I would have thought that narcissism and self-obsession would be right up your alley."

"Nobody here wants to talk about my _virtues_. Brilliant doctor, great sense of humor, mad Warcraft skills, huge dick—"

"Well, the last one certainly describes you to a T ..."

"All they want to talk about is my leg and my drugs. And my _feelings_."

"God, not those," Wilson said with mock horror, pulling into his parking spot. When House got out of rehab—assuming House got out of rehab—they might want to consolidate spots and carpool. Their hours were basically the same.

"Constantly. And when we're not talking about feelings, we're doing theater therapy or yoga. Seriously, I've gotten at least three times gayer since I've been here."

"Well, I'm glad you're making good use of the time. How's the equine therapy?"

"Fuck you," House answered. "Speaking of which ..."

Later, Wilson would blame his distraction at that moment on the presence of a full high school marching band in uniform, instruments in tow, sitting in the clinic waiting room, displaying various minor injuries. He was thrown off guard; under normal circumstances, he would have known _not_ to encourage whatever House was about to say next on the subject of fucking. "What?"

"I'm going to need you to bring me a cell phone," House said.

"You can't have a cell phone. It was in the paperwork you signed, remember? You can use the phone in the lobby."

"Phone in the lobby is _in the lobby_. Not much privacy for me to describe, in detail, how I'm going to fuck your brains out when I get out of here."

Wilson tripped over a tuba and had to catch himself on the nurses' intake desk. He shot a bewildered half-glare at the tuba's owner, who looked appropriately sheepish.

At the same time, Wilson rapidly pushed the button on his phone that decreased the voice volume. "Get a diary," he advised House.

"Not as much fun as making you squirm via the miracle of mobile. I've got it all planned. First I'm going to go down on you. I think I'll suck you off right there in the car on the way back to Princeton—"

"Are you in the lobby _right now_?" Wilson asked, panicked, looking around to make sure nobody appeared to be eavesdropping on his end of the conversation. He could only imagine what his face looked like. He could only imagine what the faces of the other people in Sea Harbor's _lobby_ looked like.

"Yep!" House answered with fiendish glee.

"House, I—"

"I haven't got to the best part yet. I think I've finally come up with a practical use for all those stupid, ugly ties you've got—"

Wilson closed the flip screen, stuffed the phone in his pocket, and made a mental note to find an exception in the Sea Harbor paperwork on outside communication devices.

* * *

"She was fine," Cameron said when Wilson stopped by Diagnostics, "until she started convulsing. Fever of 105."

"Normal EEG, no fractures on the X-rays, blood and urine were normal, too," Chase added.

"A CIPA patient falls on the ice, gets in a car accident, and she's perfectly all right until we get to her," Foreman said, jotting notes on the whiteboard.

"Could be an infection she picked up in the ER," Wilson suggested from the doorway. "LP?"

"Normal," Cameron said. "No infection."

Wilson shifted. "Some cancers can cause—"

"Nothing showed on the scan," Foreman said.

"She can't feel pain," Chase said. "What if she could?"

"Then she wouldn't have CIPA," Cameron said, deadpan.

"I mean, what if we raised her sensitivity? Gave her the requisite drugs and then—well, hurt her?"

"You want to torture the kid?" Foreman asked.

"No. Well, maybe a little," Chase hedged.

"Yes," Wilson said, "I can see why House picked you to run this department in his absence."

* * *

His first therapy session wasn't until Wednesday, a week after his visit to House at Sea Harbor. Now he found himself back at the rehab center, this time for himself. He sat on a stiff chair in a small office, across from a woman not much older than himself, with close-cropped silver hair and a welcoming face.

"All right, Mr. Wilson—"

"Doctor Wilson."

Across from him, Cindy Friedman brightened. "Oh, what do you practice?"

"I'm an oncologist," he said, a bit snidely, as if the fact that more of his patients died made him an authority on ... something. He was already embarrassed for correcting her.

But Friedman nodded, though, as if impressed by Wilson's eminence. She made him feel even more embarrassed for the posturing. "And you're Dr. House's partner? Or do you prefer another term?"

"That's ... fine," he said, abruptly realizing that he'd never seriously considered it. What _did_ he prefer?

Probably he'd prefer never having to answer that question again.

"I understand that you were also his prescribing physician for a number of years."

"Yes." Wilson frowned. "Wait, you knew I wrote his prescriptions but you didn't know I was a doctor?"

"I was just messing with you, James," Friedman said, writing on her legal pad. "I figured that, living with Greg House, you'd be used to that sort of thing. He's a handful," she observed, smiling curiously at Wilson. "I thought that the increase in his methadone might sweeten him up, but so far he's been just as big of a pain in the ass as ever."

"Elephant tranquilizers couldn't sweeten him up," Wilson admitted. "He's basically hard-wired to be a pain in the ass."

Friedman laughed. "Well, I am certainly looking forward to getting to know the person who married him, then. So tell me about his medical history, from your perspective."

"He had a leg infarction in 1999." Wilson paused again. "Why are you having me tell you things you already know?"

"It's all about the process," Friedman said. "Your perspective on events is as important as the events themselves. Like the infarction, for instance. Tell me what happened. Not the medical stuff, I know all that—I mean the other things. When did you learn about the situation with Dr. House's leg?"

_When did you learn_ wasn't half as accusatory as _where were you?_ but Wilson managed to hear it anyway. He heard it a lot when the subject of House's leg came up.

"A few days later," he said. "When it became clear that the situation was ... serious ... his girlfriend, Stacy, called me."

Friedman studied him for a moment before writing something on her legal pad. "Why the delay? I understand that the two of you were close friends."

"It's not like we talked every day," Wilson protested, a little more defensively than he'd intended. "We just—it was normal for us to go a few days without touching base. And ..." He pinched the bridge of his nose and ran a hand through his hair. "I was out of town when it happened."

"Where were you?"

"I was in Cape Cod. With my wife. It was our honeymoon."

Friedman watched him steadily. "What did you do when you found out?"

"I came back," he said. "As soon as I could, I came back."

"Really?"

Wilson ducked his head. "No. I didn't realize—I didn't understand what was happening then. I thought he'd be all right."

Friedman nodded. "But he wasn't."

"No," Wilson said. "He wasn't."

* * *

House was in his room, on the bed, reading a wrinkled old copy of _Cosmopolitan_ and looking exactly as intellectually stimulated as one might have expected him to look under the circumstances. Wilson had an instinctive reaction to the sight of a bored House; it was akin to the reaction many people would have at the sight of a lit stick of dynamite. Then again, House couldn't wreak much havoc while confined to rehab.

House also looked tired, which was not surprising. Even higher doses of methadone couldn't undo all the effects of withdrawal, not to mention the effects of being trapped here. Wilson couldn't remember the last time House had slept somewhere other than his own bed or sofa. The man did not like change. He couldn't be adapting well to Sea Harbor, even under the best of circumstances.

Wilson dropped a bag of sandwiches, sugary candy, and the cellular phone he'd smuggled through security by House's foot on the bed.

"You said the food sucked, so I thought ..." He shrugged and tried not to look too obviously self-conscious about having brought this gift.

House gave him a steady gaze over the top of the magazine before tossing it aside and sitting up to examine the contents of the bag. He looked into it with an unreadable expression. "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach," he observed.

"Actually, it's through his breastbone, or via small ports between the ribs, for minimally invasive surgery," Wilson said, sitting down on the bed next to House.

House glanced back up at him with a straight face. "What would you recommend, Doctor? Non-invasive, or invasive methods?"

"Oh, invasive, definitely invasive," Wilson said, and then invaded the hell out House's mouth with his tongue.

He tasted like cigarette smoke, but after a moment, Wilson didn't particularly care. He hadn't kissed House like this since before leaving Princeton to take him to Sea Harbor, and he missed it like a phantom limb. He'd spent too long without this kind of closeness to have it taken away only a few weeks after finding it again.

House's mouth moved against his own, warm and pliant and just as hungry as Wilson himself felt. His lips were slightly chapped, and he hadn't shaved in a few days. The scratch of stubble was pleasantly sharp. Then House's hands went around Wilson's hips and squeezed his ass.

"Mmm," Wilson murmured into House's mouth, reluctantly admonishing. "Stop it."

"Can't," House said quietly. "Not in control of my behavior. I have an addictive personality. A real live therapist told me so."

"Oh," Wilson said as House tugged him down and onto the bed. Anything else he might have said was cut off by kisses, by House's hot, wet mouth pressed against his own.

They lay like that, side by side, kissing for long minutes, touching everywhere: House's hands under his shirt, stroking up and down his ribs; his own fingers sliding under the waist of House's jeans, finding warm skin. Necking like teenagers.

Until they both heard the sharp rapping of knuckles on the open door to House's room.

Wilson jerked upright, rolling away like he'd been caught feeling up a prom date by said date's father. House shut his eyes and sighed noisily, like he'd been expecting this very interruption.

A security guard was standing in the doorway, eyes averted, looking less than pleased. "No visitors in the residential area," he barked.

Wilson looked back at House but found no help in his resigned expression. "I'm—"

"All visitors have to remain in the common room at the front of the building," the guard said.

"I was just leaving," Wilson said, looking at House, who finally opened his eyes.

What Wilson saw there made his heart sink.

He stood and straightened his clothes: House had not only untucked his shirt but had also, when Wilson wasn't paying attention, loosened his tie. The guard was still lurking in House's doorway, apparently set on personally seeing Wilson out.

"I'll be back," Wilson said quietly.

"Next time, bring beer," House said, gesturing at the bag of snacks, forgotten on the floor.

Wilson tried and mostly failed to smile.

It was going to be a long tenure here at Sea Harbor.


	8. Chapter 8

"Why are you here?"

"Beats me," House said with a shrug. "Maybe I should go." He gripped the armrests of his chair, ready to push himself to his feet and do just that.

"Stay," Friedman smiled, gesturing for him to sit. "You know what I mean."

"You've already asked me that question."

"You never answered. Why are you here?"

"It's better than going to prison," House said once again, the lie familiar by now, so comfortable he almost believed it.

"You weren't going to prison," Friedman said, reading her part. "You were likely to go free, but you offered to come here."

"I've already told you," House growled, "Wilson had had enough, he's my only friend, I couldn't lose that."

"So you came here to try to salvage that part of your life. Maybe your entire life? After all, if your closest friend is ready to give up on you, you must have already done a banner job of pushing the rest of the world away."

House rubbed his temples in frustration. "What's your point?"

"Hang on, I'm getting there. You came here instead of taking your freedom and sorting those things out on your own. You could have walked, but you _didn't_."

"_So?_"

"So there was a time when you were able to admit, if only to yourself, that you couldn't do this on your own."

House stared at her and tried to think of a way in which that wasn't true.

"There's a lot to be said for independence, Greg. For self-reliance. Self-belief. But there must have been a time not that long ago when you understood that you're not omniscient. You don't know everything, you can't _control_ everything. Sometimes, you have to put your trust in other people."

"Trust has to be earned."

"You don't give people a chance to earn it."

House looked away. Eyes locked on a spot in the carpet where the fabric had snagged and been half pulled out, he said, "I don't want to be weak."

"It's not being weak. It's being human."

"Humanity is overrated."

"Well, unfortunately for you, there's not exactly an alternative," Friedman said.

* * *

Cuddy visited on House's fourth Monday in captivity. He refused to admit, even to himself, that this made him happy.

"It's about time you showed up," House greeted her in the front visitors' area. "I told the stripper service to send someone at five."

"Unfortunately, you're stuck with me instead," Cuddy said, smiling thinly. She handed him a sack of Blow-Pops and sank down on one of the sagging couches.

"I love you," he said, with all the sincerity he could muster, retrieving a sucker from the bag.

"Wilson says you're smoking. Now your teeth are going to rot out of your skull," she sighed. "So how's everything?"

"Great. I can't get enough of this place. All the basic cable you can watch, tons of hot meth babes with no teeth, the persistent smell of old vomit and urine—I'm thinking about moving in permanently."

"And how's your therapy?" Her smile was sweeter this time, and more irritating. "I've always said you need professional help."

"_Please_ tell me you brought more interesting conversation than this."

"Well, your team has a new patient. A marine with fatigue, rashes, and joint pain. He thought it was Gulf War Syndrome."

"Imaginary diseases are my favorite kind."

"He also has bacterial vaginosis. In his mouth."

House grimaced. He hadn't puked since the increase in his methadone dosage, but the sensation of retching was hard to forget. "Tasty," he said.

"Have a lollipop," Cuddy suggested, so he did.

"Get Wilson to biopsy his salivary glands," he said.

"Already done," she said. "That was Chase's suggestion. Unfortunately, the results were inconclusive."

"Well, naturally, if Chase suggested it, the results had to be useless."

"Not useless, inconclusive. There's a difference. He's doing really well with the new responsibilities, by the way. I just might keep him in charge when you get out of here."

"Ha _ha_," House said, sucking petulantly on the Blow-Pop.

"Only four more weeks," Cuddy said. Her voice was vaguely wistful.

"Five," House corrected. "This week has only just started."

"Fine, five. It'll be over before you know it."

"Especially if I spend that time in a methadone-induced coma."

Cuddy went quiet, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap. Her chosen sofa had lost so much of its internal structure that she was practically sitting _in_ it rather than on it. Finally, she looked up at him with a watery smile. "I'm really glad you're doing this."

"Oh, god."

"I know it's not easy. But this was the right decision, and I'm—proud of you."

"That's the least of your problems," House said.

"Don't I know it. But all the same."

"Stop it; I'm gonna cry."

She stayed for another half hour, probably more out of deference to the length of the drive than out of any real desire to hang out in the dingy common area with her least favorite employee. When she left, she bent to kiss him on the cheek.

"What, no tongue?" he asked.

She smirked. "Save it for Wilson. You're a married man now."

* * *

Not sixty seconds after Cuddy's departure, Sugar Ray Robinson approached him with a pack of cards, wanting to play poker.

"Was that your girlfriend?" the kid asked as she dealt, stretching out the R in "girlfriend" until it was at least three syllables.

"No," he said, and then he gritted his teeth and added, "I'm married."

Sugar Ray raised an eyebrow, looking at the back of his cards—no, he realized, she was looking at his left hand. "You don't wear a ring."

"Yeah, well. It happened fast."

Sugar Ray smirked. "Did you knock her up?"

House tried not to smile at the image that brought to his mind. "Kind of hard to do that. He's a dude."

The kid's jaw actually dropped. "Dudes can get married to other dudes?"

"It's called a civil—" He paused and then thought better of it. "Yeah. Close enough, anyway."

Sugar Ray seemed to contemplate this while examining her own hand of cards. "Is it that guy who was here the other day with you?"

"Are you _spying_ on me?"

Sugar Ray shrugged defensively. "Nothing else to do here." She fanned her cards out, arranging them until they were all perfectly spaced. "He's kind of cute. I mean, for an old guy. No offense."

"None taken."

They played three hands, and she trounced him every single time, winning half his stock of cigarettes.

* * *

As if to add insult to injury, the coffee at Sea Harbor sucked. Trying to drink it was like trying to choke down a hot cup of tar. House held a steaming mug of Friedman's sick idea of an alternative, green tea, and tried to convince himself that piss-soaked leaves weren't such a bad flavor in comparison.

"Let's talk about James."

House stared blankly. "Who?"

"Your partner."

"My _what_?"

"James Wilson, your spouse?"

"Oh, _Wilson_."

"Wilson. Right." Friedman gave him a look. "You're pretty serious about this surname stuff, aren't you?"

"It's what I've called him since the day we met. I'm not going to change now just because I'm doing him. We're having sex," he repeated, just in case Friedman was unclear on that. "Gay sex. Lots of it. Pole-smoking, pillow-biting, skin-flute-playing, salami-hiding gay sex."

Friedman smiled. "Greg, I raised two boys. I've also been out as a lesbian for decades. There's not a single thing you can tell me that would shock me, I promise you that. So tell me about this guy you've been having lots and lots of gay sex with."

House choked on his tea. If asked, he'd blame its noxious flavor. Cindy Friedman, muff diver. He should have figured it out sooner. The office, the clothes, the _hair_ ... "What's to tell?"

"Well, how does he feel about you being here?"

He cast a look around the office, noticing for the first time the photo of Friedman with her arm around a female friend—partner, probably, and she would use that term, of course—perched on the bookshelf. Had he not been out of his mind when he first came here, he might have noticed it earlier. Or maybe he was losing it.

"Thrilled," he snapped. "Couldn't wait to get rid of me."

Friedman smiled. "That doesn't sound very likely. You two had just been married a few weeks earlier."

"How about you? When did you start munching carpets?"

"Shortly after I divorced my ex-husband," Friedman answered, and then continued without another word. "You had just gotten married—"

"The civil union was a scam. We weren't involved. We weren't even close to being involved. We just wanted to get him out of testifying at the trial."

"I thought the timing was a bit strange," Friedman said. "But you haven't separated."

"Yeah, well, my lawyer won't take my calls," House said, somewhat truthfully. Howard really wouldn't take his calls, although none of them involved separating from Wilson—and to be fair, most of his messages included the word "shyster."

"And you've become 'involved' since then."

"Did hubby know you liked to dine at the Y?"

"He suspected," Friedman said. "As you may know, I've also been seeing James during his sessions here. He thinks your decision to seek treatment has a lot to do with your relationship. What do you think about that?"

House bristled. "Stay out of my thing with Wilson," he said.

"I'm afraid I can't," Friedman apologized. "Relationships are a major issue here. Addiction—and pain—can cost people money, jobs, homes, respect, but the relationships they take are the hardest of all."

"You should put that on a greeting card."

"I tried; Hallmark won't answer my e-mails," Friedman sighed. "So tell me about 'Wilson.' How does he feel about your Vicodin use?"

House readied another inappropriate question about her sexuality, but let the thought go. The woman was immune to embarrassment and unfazed by abuse. "He's been concerned," he began instead. "No. He's been a nosy, meddling Mother Hen—"

"That's more like the Greg I know," Friedman muttered.

"He's wanted me to get off Vicodin for years."

"And now, something changed. Your relationship with him changed, and ... his feelings mattered more, maybe?"

"They always mattered," House said under his breath.

"But this was—different. Your dosage has increased over the years, sometimes erratically. And he was concerned. More than just concerned?"

House stared at the smiling photo of Friedman and her girlfriend and said, "I didn't know how much longer he'd last."

"Yeah," Friedman agreed. "It's not easy being on his side of the equation, either."

"So what, is this supposed to be some kind of breakthrough? Do I win a prize? Get out of jail free card? I don't want my best friend to dump me. Big deal."

"It can be," Friedman said, "if you're willing to deal with the emotional aspects of that—of what this means for your recovery. Your leg wasn't the only thing that changed that day."

"Right," House agreed, briefly startled by the change in subject, but willing to roll with it if it meant getting out of this session faster. "My feelings were hurt, too."

To his chagrin, Friedman smiled. "That's exactly right. Well—not in the way _you_ mean it, of course. But the way you felt _did_ change. How you felt about your life changed."

"Yeah, before this, it was all sunshine and roses."

"You lost something," Friedman said. "In a way, something was taken from you."

He met her gaze, hating the sympathy in her eyes, hating her more at that moment than he ever had in the previous weeks. His right hand twitched compulsively, fingers reaching for the safety of the pills that weren't there.

"I don't think you ever finished grieving that loss. Grief—mourning—those are important steps in recovery."

"All I need is a good long cry," he answered.

"How much of your life since then has been based on the anger and bitterness you feel about what happened to your leg? You focus on what's missing, what's _wrong_. You used to be able to do these things easily, now you can't do them at all. Or not without assistance."

"Thank you for the reminder that I am still and always will be a cripple." Somehow, despite his efforts, it fell short of his usual dark humor.

"You experienced a trauma. But you survived, and you're stronger for it. Now it's time to move forward. Grieve, let go, and let yourself be vulnerable again—"

"You think I'm not _vulnerable_?" House snapped, incredulous. "I need a goddamn _cane_ to walk."

"Emotionally, Greg. You shut people out. You keep everyone at arms' length. You resist emotional relationships with other people—"

House balked. Of all the asinine accusations, this was the easiest to rebut, if the least probable. "I'm _married_," he said, sputtering slightly at the ridiculousness of the statement, even if it was technically accurate.

"Not for love," Friedman answered in the same incredulous tone of voice. "You got married to scam the legal system. And it wasn't even your idea! It was Dr. Wilson's idea, and it was him that pushed you into an actual relationship, every step of the way."

"What can I say," House snapped, "I'm a born sub."

"Anti-social," Friedman corrected.

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, if it makes you happy. And I don't think you were born. I think you were made. I think you were made that way when you lost the use of your leg. And I think you're going to stay that way and keep driving people off until and unless you change."

House got to his feet slowly—not as slowly as when his leg had stung with pain at every move, but still gingerly—and stared her in the eye.

"Stay out of my thing with Wilson," he said again.

He left. She didn't try to stop him.

* * *

House finally put his cell phone to legitimate use when his hapless team of wannabes called later, looking for his help.

"Chronic fatigue, sore throats, rashes, oral infection with putrid discharge, multiple abscesses in the brain, hearing loss, and ascending paralysis," Chase read the litany of symptoms in what was apparently chronological order.

"It has to be an infection," Cameron said.

"His brain's getting better," Foreman answered her, "while the rest of him is getting worse? Infections don't work like that."

"Could be a paraneoplastic syndrome—it would explain the other symptoms and a depressed immune system."

House smiled—smirked—at the sound of Wilson's voice. Of course he was hanging out in House's department. "Can't get enough of me, can you?" House asked.

"You have a patient," Wilson answered humorlessly, "who might be dying. A little help would be nice."

"_I_ don't have a patient," House said. "I'm on extended medical leave. But if Chase needs some help with _his_ patient ..."

"There are more than trace amounts of depleted uranium in his urine," Chase said uncertainly. "We could start him on isotonic sodium bicarbonates."

"Depleted uranium wouldn't cause the paralysis," House muttered. "Not this early. Did you check family history?"

"House, we covered that," Foreman sighed. "There's nothing relevant in the family history."

"Do it again. Keep him on the antibiotics, check his progress hourly. And monitor his BP and hematocrit."

"That's it?" Chase asked. "That's all you've got? _Monitor_ him?"

"Oh yeah, one more thing: _get lost_. Mommy and Daddy need some privacy now."

He listened quietly to the sound of the three of them shuffling out the door, and then the electronic click as Wilson picked up the receiver and took them off speaker phone.

"You keep pretending they're our children, you're going to give them a complex," Wilson said. "Actually, you're giving _me_ a complex—"

"What did you tell Cindy Friedman the Rehab Witch about why I came here?"

"Just the truth: that you really, _really_ love psychodrama therapy. You're a natural thespian. Put you on a stage, and you come alive. You're like Olivier—"

"_You_ told her I came here because I have a hard-on for you."

"Those weren't my _exact_ words ... but yes."

"Self-aggrandizing much?"

"Are you going to deny it?"

House stopped short. He'd been expecting a little more embarrassment or self-abasement on Wilson's part. This—Wilson actually _playing_ with him, pushing right back—was not what he'd bargained for.

He could hear Wilson smiling. "Go back to therapy, House. It sounds like you've got a very long way to go."


	9. Chapter 9

Wilson called back later and immediately regretted it.

"House, I don't know how to do this!"

"It's phone sex, not rocket science. Use that dirty imagination of yours."

"It's not the _imagining_ I'm having trouble with."

"Just say what's on your mind. Come on—what do you want to do when I get out of here?"

Wilson took a breath unhappily and said, "Well—it's been a while, so I'd probably want to. You know." He was alone in the apartment—not even the rat was around to eavesdrop on this ridiculousness—but the words still wouldn't come. He lowered his voice to a whisper, hoping that would help. "M—make love."

There was a long beat of dead silence on the other end of the line.

"I'm hanging up," Wilson said.

"Wait! No, wait," House said breathlessly. "I'm not laughing. Okay, I'm laughing a little. I'll stop. Don't hang up."

"This isn't going to work."

"It'll _work_. A little cooperation would be nice. Now close your eyes and shut up for a minute."

Wilson, willing to humor him a while longer, did as told.

"I've just gotten out of here," House said, his voice pitched lower than usual. "Fresh and squeaky clean. We've barely touched in eight weeks. _Two months._ So we drive home—_I_ drive home—with my hand in your lap the entire way. What do you do with me when we get there?"

Wilson inhaled sharply, his hand moving almost of its own accord. He could picture it, three weeks from now, all the details from House stealing the car keys from him to the weight of House's hand, his profile behind the wheel of the car, his smell. Waiting, wanting him so much that if Wilson himself was driving, they'd probably end up in a ditch.

"I'd get you inside the apartment, but that's probably as far as we'd make it." He smiled a little and wondered if it was possible to be wistful about things that hadn't happened yet. "I'd probably push you up against the door and drop to my knees right there ... oh," he said, realizing his mistake. "Your leg. That wouldn't—"

"Fantasy, Wilson. Get with the program here. Leg works fine. In fact, I'm also fifteen years younger and hung like Ron Jeremy."

"Thanks," Wilson said. "That visual really helps to put me in the mood."

"What, the Hedgehog doesn't do it for you?"

"I'm seriously hanging up now."

"_Wait_," House said, with just enough of a hint of need in his voice to give Wilson pause. "Come on. There's no 'I' in 'orgasm,' you know."

"No, but there is a 'u' in 'masturbate.'"

"Hey, I've got _needs_, here. Tell me more about pushing me up against that door."

Wilson thought about it for a minute. House, clothes rumpled and probably unshaven, Vicodin-free and bright-eyed for the first time in years. His own hands on House's hips, holding him against the smooth grain of the apartment's front door. He had hazy, drunken memories of molesting House near that very same door one frigid evening not that long ago—their second kiss, as it happened. He was glad to remember that much; he'd been knocking them back so quickly that night, he was lucky he hadn't ended up passed out in a snow bank.

He'd been out of his mind that night. He was out of his mind now.

"I'd kiss you there. I'd kiss you until you couldn't breathe. And then I'd undo your pants and I'd—touch you."

"Yes," House said, barely more than a hiss.

"I'd get my hands inside your pants and touch—everything."

"I'd get your shirt off," House said. "One of those ... stupid button-downs. Too many buttons."

"I'll remember to wear a t-shirt when I pick you up," Wilson said, amused.

"Yeah. I'd get your pants out of the way, too. Touch your cock."

Wilson, not sure whether this was part of the fantasy or a real-time instruction, undid his zipper and shoved his hand into the front of his work pants, not bothering to take them off. What the hell—they were an old pair, anyway. He sighed with relief as the pressure on his erection eased, and slid his fingers up and down its length, moaning a little.

He heard House suck in a breath. "What are you doing right now?"

Wilson glanced down and swallowed hard. "You know what I'm doing."

"Tell me."

Tell him. Yeah, right. "I'm ... touching myself." He winced and tried again. "I'm touching my cock. I'm stroking it, I'm – god, this is—" Ridiculous. He was going to say ridiculous, but he stopped, the word trapped in his mouth, as he heard the distinct sound of House's labored breathing on the other end of the line, and an image leaped to his mind, unbidden: House with the cell phone pressed to his ear, eyes closed, hard in his jeans, trying his damnedest not to do anything about it. "I'm jerking off to the sound of your voice," he said.

"Tell me," House said, practically pleading.

"I'd get on my knees," Wilson said again, "and I'd pull your cock out of your pants." He shut his eyes again. So close. He could practically smell the sex, the masculinity, could almost feel the soft, tender skin, the solid thickness of House's erect cock. "I'd lick you all over. Until you couldn't stand it anymore."

"Don't stop," House groaned.

"Then I'd suck you. I'd push you back against the door and suck your cock until you screamed."

The sound House made wasn't exactly a scream, more of a keening moan, but Wilson liked it just the same. "I'd touch your balls while I suck you off. You like that."

"Everyone likes that," House said, or possibly gasped, argumentative to the last.

"You love it," Wilson said. "I'd hold you there so you couldn't move or thrust or do anything but let me take control. God, House," he said, short of breath himself, his hand moving faster and tighter on his dick. "You—you taste so good. You're so hot. You—"

Before he could complete that thought—before he even knew what the thought was—his cock jerked and his body spasmed, and with one hand still holding the phone to his ear, he came, shooting all over his other hand, his own dick, and not just his pants, but his shirt as well. He shuddered and spurted twice more before finishing.

From the other end of the line he heard a low, muffled groan. "Gotta go," House said, his voice strained, and then he hung up.

Wilson sat with the phone pressed to his ear and looked down at the sticky mess in his lap. "This is weird," he declared to the empty room. He dropped the phone and grimaced; the arm holding the phone had gone numb, and now he needed a shower.

* * *

The diphyllobothriasis had been Foreman's idea. Apparently he'd done a rotation in tropical and sub-tropical diseases, and tapeworm infection was an area of study.

"It was incredible," a nurse was telling him at the front desk. "It was at least twenty-five, thirty feet long!"

Hannah Morgenthal had been prescribed praziquantel and a B12 supplement and discharged. But the car accident that brought her to PPTH hadn't been as kind to her mother.

Wilson wandered past her room—their room, really, as Hannah had hardly left her mother's side. He paused, looking through the glass walls. Hannah's back was turned to him, and her mother wasn't paying him any mind, engrossed as she was in whatever her daughter was saying.

He knocked.

Hannah turned and, to his surprise, smiled at him. It seemed he'd been forgiven for their first meeting.

With an answering smile, he stepped into the room to say hello.

* * *

On Wednesday, Wilson was back at Sea Harbor for his next meeting with House's therapist. He preferred to think of them that way—as meetings with _House's_ therapist, not meetings with his own. It let him feel like he still retained some control and a modicum of dignity in this mess.

Friedman wanted to talk about the infarction again, or rather about what happened after. "So you cut your honeymoon short," she prompted.

"Yeah," he said. "But it was fine. She understood." Then, laughing a bit crazily, he added, "I've had three, so it was no huge loss for me."

Friedman smiled. "Did you and Greg do anything for a honeymoon? Go anywhere nice?"

Wilson blinked. "Well, we were thinking about going to prison, but we decided to go to rehab instead."

"A fine choice," Friedman agreed. "So you came back to New Jersey."

It took him a moment to process the return to their original subject. "I came back. But there wasn't anything I could do."

"What happened when he left the hospital? Against medical advice, I might add."

"Nobody knew how to act around him," Wilson said. "We couldn't do things we used to do—running, tennis—even just standing for long periods of time. It was all out. And he was going stir-crazy. He'd always been active—now he was looking at needing a cane, if not a wheelchair, for the rest of his life."

"Was he in any kind of counseling?"

"House?" Wilson laughed incredulously. "Never. No counseling, no therapy—physical or otherwise—he just sort of ... shut down. He was on medical leave from work. I don't think he did anything but watch TV and down pills for the first two weeks."

"He was on Vicodin at the time, from the surgery, right?" Wilson nodded. "Why did nobody try to get him a longer-lasting pain med?"

Wilson sighed. "House can be ... very stubborn when it comes to some things."

"I've noticed."

"And with the drugs, nobody wanted to intervene."

"But you knew the long-term effects of Vicodin use. You must have seen something like this coming."

"Yes," Wilson said, knowing full well his agitation was showing but unable to do anything to control it. "I knew. Stacy knew. But he'd just lost the use of his leg. He was in excruciating pain. The pills were the only thing keeping him from being in agony all the time; we couldn't intervene in that. We felt ... guilty."

"What did you have to feel guilty about? You weren't even in the state when everything happened. There was nothing you could have done."

He felt his eyes lowering before he realized what he was doing, and knew immediately that Friedman would pick up on it.

"James?"

He had tried, for so long, to put this behind him—to put it behind him and House both. He knew that it was ridiculous in a way, given how much the infarction and everything that came after affected both of their lives. Almost every aspect of House's life had changed, and Wilson had adapted along with him. But still he tried to run from this, from the catalyst, where everything began.

He stared at a point somewhere over Friedman's shoulder as he said, "I told Stacy that they should remove the damaged muscle and tissue."

"After the procedure," Friedman started, clearly prepared to tell him again that it wasn't his fault.

"No," he said. "Before. I told her she should do what the other doctors were recommending."

Friedman watched him for a moment. "Which she did."

"She wasn't a doctor. She didn't know. She trusted me—I knew what was going on, medically, and I was his friend."

"James," Friedman began again, her voice even. He realized abruptly that he'd been on the verge of babbling. "She was still his next of kin, not you. It was her choice in the end. And it was the right one. Would he even be alive today if that decision hadn't been made?"

Wilson shook his head. "Who knows? Maybe he would have been fine. Or at least able to walk normally."

"You don't really believe that," Friedman said.

"I don't know what I believe."

"So you felt guilty, and Stacy felt guilty, so you both let House have his way from that point forward, no matter how self-destructive he was being."

"That's basically been my life for the last eight years, yes," Wilson said.

"I should write a paper," Friedman marveled. "You people are a goldmine."

* * *

In the common area of Sea Harbor, Wilson found House playing cards with a purple-dreadlocked fellow patient. As far as Wilson could tell, the other person—a young woman—was kicking House's ass. He observed them from a distance until he saw the girl cackle and collect her winnings—five hand-rolled cigarettes—and then he pursed his lips and interrupted.

"May I have a word with you?" he asked House, who looked up at him guilelessly. "In private?"

"Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of my posse," House answered.

House's "posse" grinned. "Nah, it's cool. I'll just take _my_ smokes and be on my way."

House sneered at the girl as she left, still smiling smugly.

"Are you out of your mind?" Wilson asked. "That girl can't be more than a teenager."

"Sixteen," House corrected. "Jealous? All the babes here want me."

"You're a pig," Wilson declared, walking back toward the hall where House's room was, just slow enough to make sure House was following. "And a bad influence."

"They were her cigarettes to begin with," House said to his back.

"Oh, well, in _that_ case," Wilson replied.

"Besides, I let her win."

"Ah, yes. Letting a child win cigarettes. What a gentleman." Wilson reached House's door and paused.

"You wanna know why?" House opened the door and they both went inside.

"Sure, I'll humor you. Tell me why."

"Because she's my wingman," House said, and as Wilson heard an unearthly screaming racket coming from down the hall in the common room they'd just left, House unceremoniously shoved Wilson backwards and onto the bed.

Wilson tried to process what was going on, which would have been difficult enough without House on top of him, kissing him fiercely and grinding against him. "You—" he started to say, but House's tongue got in the way. A few moments later, he tried again. "You got that girl to ... _create a distraction?_ So you could get your rocks off?"

"Told you. Wingman."

Wilson pondered the wisdom of this while House nipped at his jaw and started undoing the buttons on his shirt. "You're shameless," he finally concluded.

"Hi, have we _met_?" House asked in response, and then bit Wilson's shoulder more than a little territorially while his hands slid under the waist of Wilson's jeans.

Distraction or not, Wilson was well aware that they were on borrowed time, so he wasted little of it getting just enough of their respective clothes out of the way. They'd have time for a long, slow fuck when House got out of here. For now, though, he'd just have to act like a kid on a date in the back seat of his parents' car.

He got his hand inside House's pants, reveling in the sigh of pleasure he elicited when he wrapped his hand around the already hardening length of House's cock. After some shifting of bodies and clothes, they arranged themselves so that Wilson could stroke him—not too fast, but not too leisurely, either. House kissed him, wet and deep.

"Clean sheets," House panted into his mouth.

Wilson nuzzled his neck, rough stubble scratching at his lips. "Wha—?"

"Just washed," House mumbled.

"Good for you," Wilson said, confused by House's laundry largesse but not really caring one way or another if he'd done the sheets before Wilson's arrival. He'd had sex on filthier surfaces. He had, after all, gone to college.

"Housekeeping only does them every two weeks," House said, and through the haze of arousal, something finally clicked. Maybe it had something to do with House gently but firmly pushing Wilson's shoulders down. Wilson stopped what he was doing and gave House an exasperated look. House stared back at him with a comically innocent expression.

"You could have just asked," he said, trying not to sound too affectionate about it, as he slid the rest of the way down the bed, licked his lips, and took House's cock into his mouth.

House's head hit the mattress with a soft thunk and he groaned, hips rising just slightly off the bed. Wilson sucked him without hesitation, loving the feel and the taste of him. House was already hard in Wilson's mouth, and Wilson let his eyes close, mouth and hands moving by instinct. He felt House's hands on his head, and then those same hands touching his face, almost reverently—reverently, that is, if Wilson pretended for a moment that this was anyone other than Greg House, who revered nothing. Or maybe he was right, and this was the best way House knew to show his feelings: when both of them were otherwise occupied, and Wilson's mouth was full.

It made sense that House had never seriously said _I love you_ to him. The last person he'd said it to crippled him.

Above him, House groaned, and Wilson redoubled his efforts, sucking in earnest. They were only a few more minutes before House tensed, grabbed Wilson's shoulders, and flooded his mouth.

"Sheets are still going to be sweaty," Wilson said a moment later, wiping his lips with the back of his hand and helpfully tucking House back into his pants.

House, apparently blissed out and staring at the ceiling in a daze, did not respond.

Wilson quickly checked his watch and got off the bed, straightening his clothes. He opened the door to House's room and stuck his head through the crack, peering down the hall. The ruckus from earlier had apparently calmed down, which meant their time was nearly up. He turned back to the bed to get an IOU from House, only to find House fast asleep.

"Can I at least get a goodbye kiss?" Wilson asked dryly. House didn't stir. Wilson grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

House shook, but didn't wake.

"Not funny, House," Wilson said, shaking him harder. House's head lolled. Wilson's heart dropped into his stomach.

He moved without thinking, on autopilot. Shallow breaths. Weak pulse. He was babbling, House's name mixed with shouts for help directed out the open doorway. He grabbed House, rolled him onto his side, and tilted his head to keep his airway open.

"I need some help in here!" he yelled just as finally, _finally_, two nurses and an orderly swarmed into the room, pushing him out of the way.

This was his fault. This was his doing. Not the sex, but the methadone—_he_ had been the one to tell Sea Harbor to increase House's dosage. This was happening because of him.

Wilson stepped back and back again until he hit the wall, leaning against it for support, wracked with guilt, completely helpless.


	10. Chapter 10

He awoke, surrounded by the sharp smell of antiseptic and the fainter but creeping smell of sickness that no amount of bleach could remove. The world was white and soft around the edges until he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, swiped a hand down his face, and cleared his vision.

His leg burned like it had been branded: staggering pain, starting at the site of the infarction and radiating outward, seeping into his blood and filling his body with a red-black ache. It was a pain he hadn't felt since his detox upon admission to Sea Harbor: like knives, like fire.

"Hey!" he shouted, his voice hoarse from disuse. A scan of the room showed no one, but he could hear the sounds of people working from outside the door, the shuffle of feet and the tapping of computer keyboards. "I think I'm overdue for some _drugs_ here!"

He groaned, grasped his thigh, and writhed on the narrow hospital bed, his body moving without his control, like it was trying to escape from itself. He had his mouth open to call out again when a male nurse in blue scrubs stepped through the door and into the room.

"What happened to my methadone?" House demanded before the man could get a word in.

"You're off the methadone," the nurse said, perfunctorily checking House's heart monitor. "You don't remember? You went into respiratory distress."

"Then what the hell am I on?" he gasped.

The nurse picked up the chart hanging at the foot of the bed. "Buprenorphine and amitriptyline," he read.

House closed his eyes. "Buprenorphine doesn't work," he ground out through clenched teeth.

When he opened his eyes again, the nurse was shrugging and not looking at him. "Not my call," he said.

"Then find someone who can make the call!" House shouted. The nurse backed up, startled, letting House's chart fall from his hands with a clatter.

"I'll see what I can do," the nurse said, clearly intending to do nothing of the sort. He left the room, shaking his head.

House grabbed at the pain in his leg, digging his fingers into his aching thigh and gritting his teeth, trying not to cry out from the agony.

* * *

"We knew that this was a potential problem with methadone," Wilson said the next morning, his voice tinny through the phone line, but no less despairing. Even through the mind-obliterating pain, House could hear his hopelessness.

"So adjust the dose," House answered, staring down at his hand clenched on his burning, denim-covered thigh. His whole body felt taut with pain, wound like a spring. He was sitting in the lobby, pressing the public phone to his ear so hard the side of his head was starting to ache from the pressure. They'd found the cell phone and confiscated it: game over.

"They can't. You already passed out, nearly stopped breathing—and with your history?" Wilson released a breath and, as usual, started rationalizing. "If this isn't working, there are other options for managing the pain—"

"I've tried the other options," House snarled. "They suck."

"These people are pain management professionals, House. They know what they're doing. You have to trust them to find a way—"

"These people," House interrupted, "are idiots. They put together the dosage and schedule that knocked me out in the first place. Now you want me to let them have another try? See if they can actually kill me this time? Maybe try a different tack this time—suffocation didn't work, so now let's kill him with pain?"

"You don't have any other choice," Wilson answered. The phone line went dead.

* * *

He sat in a wheelchair during that evening's affirmations session, unable to stand through the pain.

The other patients went around in a circle, each speaking in turn. _My family loves me. My wife supports me. I am unique. I am a good person._

House stayed silent. He had nothing to say. Every part of him ached, every inch of his body, head to toe, inside and out. His stomach roiled; his limbs were covered in gooseflesh and sweat. It was withdrawal all over again: the skin-crawling sickness, the rebellion of his body, the pain in his leg, so recently tamed, now ratcheted up to pure agony.

He'd told them before that Buprenorphine didn't work. He'd tried it; it did nothing to stop the pain. It had been understood, he believed, upon his admission to Sea Harbor, that there was no way they were putting him on that useless crap again. They could have titrated down the methadone to a level that wouldn't knock him flat every time he exhausted himself. Or they could have realized what a load of bullshit this entire experience was and sent him home with a scrip for Vicodin and the last tattered shreds of his dignity.

But they hadn't. Instead, they'd put him here, where he would languish for the next several weeks until he got out—or until he found a way to off himself, whichever came first.

At the moment, the odds weren't looking too good.

* * *

Someone, somewhere, decided to send him to music therapy.

"Music therapy" was a glorified broom closet with three guitars, an out-of-tune upright piano, and a timid counselor he chased off within three minutes. The paint was peeling from the walls. Alone, the pain in his leg temporarily dulled to a low burn by the very recent dose of Buprenorphine, he tapped out the simple chords of "Calvary Cross" from memory, his eyes closed, listening to the melody playing silently in his head. His fingers moved stiffly, clumsily across the keyboard.

_Music and rhythmic therapies have been used with substance abuse rehabilitation patients with great success_, the brochure had said. _Many patients in rehab say that drug use was a way to escape their feelings and emotions, giving them a false sense of freedom. Music therapy shows patients that ethereal sensations can be a positive, constructive part of life without drugs or alcohol._

His jaw clenched and his lip turned up in the beginning of a sneer. Almost despite himself, he felt his fingers curl, tighten, and smash the keys with an ugly, cacophonous clatter.

He'd played the piano since childhood, the guitar since he was a teen. Nearly his entire life: a constant, an outlet, a source of pleasure and even, just maybe, joy.

Even this, they'd taken from him.

He became aware that Sugar Ray was watching him from the door, chewing the chipped purple nail polish off her thumbnail. "That was pretty," she mumbled, pushing herself from the doorway with her shoulder and then fidgeting with the hem of her t-shirt. "Until the end there."

House looked back down at the keys, black and yellow-ivory, discolored from years of sunlight and oily human fingers. Cheap and dirty. Damaged.

"I heard they took you off the good stuff."

His lips tightened in a grimace. "There's not much here in the way of doctor-patient confidentiality, is there?"

"You want to smoke?"

He held out his hand and accepted a cigarette and a light.

"Man, that blows," she said, leaning on the piano. "You were almost done, too, weren't you?"

House figured it for a rhetorical question and didn't bother to answer.

"You know," Sugar Ray said, and then took a long drag from her cigarette. "I know where you could get some stuff. Stronger than this," she added, waving the cigarette around. "If you wanted."

House tapped ash onto the bare tile floor. "Yeah. Maybe."

They stayed in silence for several minutes, smoking, until the door opened and a valium-addicted housewife from Manhattan timidly entered the room for her 1:00 session.

* * *

"You're angry," Friedman said later. "Well," she amended, "angrier than usual."

"Yeah, I'm angry," House said. "I'm in _pain_. I'm trapped in this shit hole with a bunch of morons who think they can fix the missing muscle in my leg with _happy pills_—"

"Not just antidepressants," Friedman said. "Buprenorphine—"

"Doesn't work," House interrupted. "How many times do I have to tell you people that Vicodin—"

"Vicodin is no longer an option. Methadone is no longer a viable option—"

"I _know_ that!" he shouted, slamming his clenched fists on the wooden surface of her desk. "I was there! I'm the one who stopped breathing!"

Friedman looked at him, her face solemn and, he thought, sorrowful. "Things were working," she said quietly, "and now they're not. You were having success here, and now you have to start over from scratch, looking for a solution."

"Fuck that," House swore. "I had a solution. I was _fine_ on Vicodin. My life was _fine_."

"Now _I'm_ depressed," Friedman said with a wistful smile. "We were making such progress before this."

House laughed bitterly. "How do you figure? I've just been killing time until I can get out of here."

"I disagree, Greg—I think our sessions have been very productive. I think we've been getting close to finding the root of your problem—"

"My problem? My _problem_ is I got fucked over by a vindictive cop and locked up by a bunch of lawyers and judges and other power-hungry idiots who think they understand what's happening to me. My problem is a trigger-happy FDA and judicial system that knows _fuck all_ about medicine. My problem is my fucking _leg_, and Wilson—"

"Your problem is Vicodin addiction, Greg," Friedman said patiently.

House wanted to strangle her. "Vicodin is not the problem," he snarled.

"No, Vicodin in particular is not the problem. Addiction is the problem. Compulsive, uncontrollable drug use that continues in spite of repeated negative consequences."

"It's not a _problem_—"

"After the infarction and the surgery, you checked yourself out of the hospital against medical advice," Friedman said, cutting him off and changing the subject.

"Let me guess. I should have stayed in bed like a good boy. Because following other people's advice and orders had worked out _so well_ for me."

"I grant that things sucked," Friedman said. "But that's not my point—my point is that you had a prescription for post-surgical pain, and then you left the hospital. You left with a prescription for Vicodin and you never got off it. You never gave yourself a _chance_ to get off it."

"I never needed to get off it," he growled.

"Vicodin is a short-acting opioid; it's not meant to be used as the bedrock of chronic pain treatment. Even aside from the fact that it contains high amounts of acetaminophen, which can lead to liver failure, it requires repeated doses throughout the day, which keeps you focused on your pain. It doesn't even last long enough at night for a decent amount of sleep."

"Gosh, _really_?" he snapped. "I had _no_ idea."

"You should have been weaned off Vicodin there, at the hospital, and then you should have been given a prescription for a single-ingredient, sustained-release drug, along with a limited quantity of quick-release opioids for breakthrough pain. But you weren't given that, or you wouldn't take it, and that, right then, is when you became an addict. _That's what you are_, Greg."

"I go to work. I do my job. I _function_—"

"Uncontrollable drug use that continues in spite of _repeated_ negative consequences," Friedman said again. "You nearly killed yourself in December, not to mention your arrest and everything that happened to Dr. Wilson. What's more negative than that? What could possibly be more negative than that? And yet you keep at it. You keep trying to use, no matter who gets hurt—"

"I'm not Wilson's babysitter," House spat. "He's a big boy, he can take care of himself."

"I know you harbor a lot of anger for him," Friedman said. "He ended your standoff with the detective, he refused to write you a new Vicodin prescription when you wanted one, and of course there's his involvement in the surgery on your leg. But you know he did those things because he cares. He's—"

"What?"

Friedman frowned. "What do you mean, what?"

House stared at her, unexpectedly floundering, rewinding her words in his head, which was throbbing with pain. "He told you that he had something to do with my leg?"

"I've been seeing him Wednesday evenings. Naturally, we've talked about what happened when you had the infarction and the debridement surgery—"

"That was Stacy's decision," House said without thinking.

"I've told him that myself, but he still feels guilty for telling her to do it while you were unconscious. You've talked about the resentment you carried for Stacy after the surgery—"

"I didn't know."

In the long silence that followed, his world went a little bit grayer.

Friedman's face was pale. "You and James have never talked about—"

"No."

She began to stammer. "I thought—I thought you knew. It's something that's clearly been—weighing on his mind. His sense of guilt—this is something the two of you should talk about, maybe in couple's therapy. I could fit you both in for a session—"

House got to his feet with considerable effort. "We're done."

"Greg—"

He hobbled out of the office, slamming the door behind him, and paced down the hall without care or thought to where he was headed. One foot—plus cane—in front of the other, he stalked to the common area of the Sea Harbor residential center. The other patients were scattered throughout the room, on the couches, sitting at the chess tables, watching television, glazed-eyed and drooling. Their faces swelled and shrank as he watched, squinting against the changing colors and shapes.

He remembered when he came out of the induced coma all those years ago, after the surgery he hadn't wanted—the surgery he'd actively, aggressively declined. He recalled the disorientation, the numbness, the familiar after-effects of the anesthesia he wasn't supposed to have been on. Everything felt wrong. Sleep had threatened to drag him back under, to a land without thought or care, but he'd fought it, kicking his way to the surface to find out what had happened to him, only to see Stacy sitting at his bedside, face contorted with what he would only later realize was a mix of dread and resignation.

She had crippled him.

Even supine in the hospital bed, grasping at shreds of lucidity, he'd known that something was off. His leg felt wrong; not the kind of wrong it should have felt like, the wrong he was expecting from the treatment he'd requested, but like something else. He'd perceived missing time, missing events, the days leading up to the coma like a black and white movie watched on TV in the middle of the night, the details only half remembered. The absence of memory was like a violation, like something had been stolen from him. Something was off, something was _wrong_, and he struggled into wakefulness and forced the question from his dried throat.

_What did you do to me?_

She had crippled him, and Wilson had helped.

She had gone against his wishes, disregarded his professional, _medical_ opinion about his own condition, and authorized a procedure to destroy his leg.

And Wilson, his best friend, had not only let her, but urged her. Told her that it was the right thing to do. That it would be okay.

In the weeks after the surgery, when his relationship with Stacy had been slowly disintegrating under the weight of her guilt, his resentment, and the trauma of his unexpected new disability, he'd spent increasing amounts of time away from their apartment, at the only place he could conceivably go: Wilson's. He went there to get away from home, away from Stacy, away from the betrayal—but apparently, all that time, he'd just been running headfirst, cluelessly, into another one.

And now House was living with him. Sleeping with him. Legally bound to him.

He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. The room was spinning; his heart was racing; he felt sweat breaking out on his forehead. Everything he was, his entire life for the last eight years, came down to that decision. Stacy's decision, Wilson's decision, the decision that was taken from him. The choice that had led him right to this very place, this dank institution that had been his prison for six weeks and that now wanted to break him. Everything: this pain that refused to go away, rehab, the trial, the civil union, Christmas Eve, jail, the cop, the drugs, losing a lover, going from athlete to invalid in one fell swoop, all coming down to the searing pain and a leg that no longer worked. Stacy. Wilson.

"House?"

He turned around feverishly and faced the last person he wanted to see.


	11. Chapter 11

He found House in the rec room, blinking rapidly, a lost expression on his face.

"House?" He was practically teetering; Wilson grabbed him by the arms and held him upright. "Hey. _Hey_. Are you all right?"

Gradually, House's eyes regained their focus. He stared hard at Wilson for several seconds, and then violently pushed him away.

"Don't," House said quietly, "don't touch me," and then he turned around and stalked off toward the private rooms.

Wilson followed him, momentarily too stunned to speak. He was pretty sure he hadn't done anything lately to deserve that. "What is it now?" he asked as he trailed House into his room.

"What is it _now_?" House turned around, his face contorted in frustration and pain, a sickly grimace twisting his mouth. "It's the same as it's always been, isn't it? Only I didn't know. Because you never told me."

"What are you talking about?" Wilson asked, hating the plaintiveness that came through in his voice. He was used to House's abuse by now; it shouldn't sting like this anymore. But something was off—something about the way House looked that made Wilson think of shattered glass.

"You know goddamn well what I'm talking about," House said, raising his voice only to turn away. Wilson watched him pace, limping, to the dresser and start rifling through one of the drawers.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Packing," House snarled.

Wilson raised his eyebrows. "Going somewhere? I didn't realize field trips were part of your treatment plan."

"Fuck the plan, and fuck you," House said. "I don't need _treatment_."

"Oh, god, this again." Wilson sighed. "It's going to be fine. They'll find another way—"

"I don't need treatment," House said, raising his voice again and slamming shut the drawer he'd just been sorting through.

"House, you have a problem. Look, you've already admitted once that you're an addict—"

"It's not a problem."

Wilson stalked across the short distance between them, grabbed the left sleeve of House's shirt, and yanked it up to his elbow, exposing jagged, still-healing marks on the soft flesh of his inner arm. "It's a _problem_."

"_Pain_ is the problem," House said, jerking his arm back.

"Nobody denies that you're in pain! But you have to find a better way to cope with it than _mutilating_ your body and doping yourself to the gills with stuff that's going to kill you! You almost went to _prison_ for this, for God's sake! You almost lost your medical license! And one of these days, if you don't get help, you're going to end up in a _morgue_—"

"I wouldn't even be here if you hadn't cut into my damn leg!"

Wilson actually took a step back, so powerful was the force of the accusation, of House's fury. It was like the wind had been knocked out of him, like he'd been punched in the gut.

House knew. Finally, after all this time, he knew.

"Eight years," House said. "Eight _years_ you let me blame Stacy. Like it had nothing to do with you. Like you just _happened to be there_."

"I came back from my honeymoon because I knew you were in the hospital," Wilson said, close to stuttering. "Stacy _asked_ me for my advice. She didn't know what to do. It was the right decision, House, you know it was the right decision—"

"It was _my_ decision," House said, "and you took it from me. You had no right—"

"We had every right! You could have _died_. You were out of your mind and then you were unconscious—that's why people have medical proxies, to make smart decisions when they're incapable of doing so themselves. You _couldn't_—"

"Get out."

Wilson stopped short. "What?"

"Get out," House said again. His voice was low and dangerous, like a hissing fuse, just waiting to reach its end and explode. "Get the _fuck_ out of here. Get out of my room, get out of my apartment, get out of my _fucking life_."

"House—"

"I'm transferring to another facility. I don't want your money. I've got two weeks left, and when I get out, I don't want to see you. I want you, and all of your shit, out of my apartment. Think you can follow those instructions? I know what a hard time you have listening to what I want."

Wilson watched in stunned silence as House zipped the duffel bag shut and slung it over his shoulder. He felt like he'd been slapped.

"You and I are done," House continued. "We're not together. We're not friends. We're _finished_." He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket.

"Lock the apartment door on your way out," he added, shoving past Wilson, nearly knocking him aside, and disappearing into the hallway beyond his room.

Wilson didn't follow him.

* * *

He drove back to Princeton on autopilot. If there were lights, stop signs, other cars on the road, he didn't remember them.

The sky was overcast, threatening rain or snow—he didn't know which and couldn't be bothered to turn on the radio to find out.

He parked in front of the apartment—House's apartment—and turned off the ignition. Then he sat. He stared out the windshield for several long minutes as the sky grew ever darker, until the clouds broke open and drops of not-quite-rain, not-quite snow, not-quite-hail started to fall onto it, making soft pattering sounds and gradually blurring the view of the street.

He went inside. He had to—practically everything he owned was in there. Even if he were to go to a hotel—or worse, sleep on the sofa in his office—he'd still have to get his toothbrush.

He'd long since collapsed and thrown out most of the boxes he'd used to move everything into the apartment. Only a few remained, and they were all full, laden with books and other things that he hadn't been able to make room for among House's possessions. Wilson stood in the living room and looked around. Their respective belongings were hopelessly mixed together now. It would take ages to sort them apart again.

Fortunately, he had two weeks to do exactly that.

He'd been an idiot to think he could keep this to himself, to think that they could go the rest of their lives without House ever finding out what Wilson's role had really been in that nightmare. He'd been an idiot to think that they were beyond the point where that could destroy them, that what they had now was stronger than what he'd done then.

However House had found out—a slip from Friedman, probably, who wouldn't have known not to speak of it—didn't really matter. It was done. They were done.

And maybe, after everything, this was what he deserved.

Wilson took off his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair, and then dropped onto the couch, head in his hands.

* * *

At two-thirty in the morning, he heard three dull thumps at the front door. He startled from a fitful sleep on the couch and sat upright, utterly still, waiting for something else to confirm that someone was indeed knocking.

When a scraping sound followed, he got to his feet and went to answer the door.

On the other side stood House, gray-eyed and almost as gray-faced, shivering and waterlogged, looking like a drowned rat.

"Honey," House rasped, "I'm home."

He collapsed in the doorway, half in the apartment and half in the hall.

"Oh, shit," Wilson said.

* * *

Wilson managed to haul him from the doorway to the couch, which was not unlike carrying a sleeping cat—a sleeping, half-freezing, 180-pound cat.

Only after depositing his semi-lucid ex-lover on the sofa, wrapping him in a blanket, and checking all his vitals did Wilson give himself permission to freak out.

"Are you out of your _mind_? No, no, don't answer that. I know you're out of your mind. How did you even _get_ here?"

"Home," House slurred.

"Yes, but _how_?"

"Sugar Ray Robinson," House explained, like it was the most rational thing in the world to be transported out of a supposedly secure rehab facility and all the way back to Princeton by a dead boxer.

Wilson threw his hands in the air. "Great, that's just great. You think this is a joke? You _ditched_ court-ordered rehab. You're going to _jail_. You know that, right? Jail! Do _not_ pass 'Go,' do _not_ collect two hundred dollars—"

That was when House's face twisted into an expression Wilson had never seen before—not on House, at any rate.

"God," Wilson said, amazed and horrified. "Don't—it's—"

"I can't," House said, his voice strangled, breathing like he'd just run a marathon on his damaged leg. "I can't do it."

"You were doing so well. You were _so close_—"

"No. You have no idea, _no_ idea what it's like—"

"I know you. I know _you_, you can scam your way through anything—"

His voice was a croak. "Not this time."

Wilson shook his head, denying it, but House was _here_ now, in the living room, having left an alternative sentencing program without permission or notice, and what else could he say? Instead, he dropped to his knees in front of the couch and slung his arms around House, holding on like he was trying to physically hold House together, feeling those awful, shuddering breaths racking House's entire body.

House was here. He'd come home. That had to mean something, didn't it?

"What are you on right now?" Wilson asked.

"Bu—buprenorphine," House said, his voice choked, barely louder than a whisper. "Ami...triptyline. I think. Not enough. Hurts."

Wilson closed his eyes as realization dawned, and relief, right on its heels, washed over him. "Amitriptyline. You had a manic episode. It's not an uncommon side effect."

"Grrpphghg," House said to the side of Wilson's neck.

"Yeah," Wilson said. "It happens to the best of us."

House snorted, or possibly sobbed; from this position, Wilson couldn't really tell. "What the hell am I going to do with you?" he murmured.

"My leg," House said through clenched teeth, "hurts."

After what he must have been through to get here, Wilson didn't doubt it. "Hang on," he muttered. He let House go and stood, heading for the kit he knew House kept on the bookshelf nearest the TV. He ignored the fine layer of dust coating the top of the kit and quickly found the vial of morphine he knew would be inside, along with a syringe and alcohol wipe, and drew up a not insignificant amount the liquid. With House, Wilson wasn't even sure the amount he had would be enough.

It would have to be. It was all he could do.

House winced when the needle went into his thigh but then sighed, anticipating the relief. Wilson held on to him and eased him into a reclining position on the couch. House went willingly, closing his eyes.

"I'm an addict," he murmured.

Wilson covered him with a blanket. "I know. It's okay."

House moaned. "It's not."

"No," Wilson said, "it's not. But it will be."

He watched House's breath even out. Then he picked up the phone and started dialing.

* * *

Chase shrugged. "So take him back," he said.

Wilson stared blankly at him.

"To rehab?" Cameron asked. Her hair was tied back in a messy ponytail and she was wearing her glasses. It was the most ruffled Wilson had ever seen her. "Don't you think they'll _notice_?"

"We can break in and sneak him back to his room. We've broken into homes, offices, cars..." For this last example, Chase gestured illustratively at Foreman.

"Yeah, those are _just like_ high-security rehab facilities," Foreman sniped, looking on in disgust at House unconscious on the sofa.

"Look, he got out somehow," Chase said. "It can't be impossible to get him back in."

"He's right," Wilson said. "We have to get him back in. If he gets caught out here, even if he turns himself in, he's still breaking the terms of his deal. They'll throw him in prison, he'll lose his medical license..."

"This is insane," Foreman said.

"What are you suggesting?" Cameron asked Chase. "That all five of us drive out there and—what, hoist him through a window? He's barely functional."

"Maybe we bribe a security guard," Chase suggested.

"I know," Foreman said mockingly, "we could dig a tunnel under the building."

"It doesn't matter!" Wilson gripped the back of a chair to keep from grabbing one of them and shaking them until they understood. "We have to do something. He can't stay here, and we're running out of time."

"For Christ's sake," Foreman said and then grabbed his coat. "I'm driving."

It took all three of them to drag House's limp body outside and down the small number of stairs. House was a dead weight in their arms the whole way, and both Chase and Foreman were red-faced and breathless by the time they got him into the backseat of Foreman's car.

The drive to Sea Harbor seemed longer than Wilson remembered it. He kept his eyes locked on the car's digital clock when he wasn't checking to make sure House's breathing and pulse were still normal. House, for his part, spent the trip with his head lolling alternatively on Wilson's and Cameron's shoulders, completely oblivious to the proceedings around him.

They did not discuss what they were going to do once they finally arrived at the center.

The lot at Sea Harbor was nearly empty, the few vehicles parked some distance from the front doors and looking well abandoned. Foreman pulled up as close to the building as he could, parking not so much in one spot as lengthwise across three. He left the engine running and turned around to face the back of the car, one hand placed on the side of Chase's seat for leverage.

"What now?" he asked.

Wilson exchanged glances with Cameron and Chase, then swallowed and said, "We get him back inside."

Foreman's irritation was clear even in the darkness of the car. "How?"

"By any means necessary," Chase said firmly.

Foreman gave him a withering look and then turned and opened his own door.

* * *

The necessary means would turn out to be brute force.

House was slightly more lucid after the long ride, but this only served to make him more resistant to their efforts. He took a swipe at Wilson, missed, and hit Chase in the face—again—after which Cameron had to help keep his limbs in some kind of order to prevent him from clocking anyone else in their party.

They managed to drag him to the side of the residential building, where Chase and Foreman rested for a moment. Wilson looked up, indicating a window that was ever so slightly ajar—and placed about five and a half feet off the ground.

"Oh, you have got to be shitting me," Foreman said.

Wilson gesticulated wildly, trying to demonstrate that there were no other entrances or exits to the building. He was aware that next to him Cameron was wearing an expression of bemused pity. He was also aware of House, still thoroughly drugged, trying and failing to affect another escape by crawling away across the lawn. Wilson reached out with one leg, gently kicking House's arm out from under him, sending him face-first into the grass with a muffled whine. He refused to feel bad about it.

"All we have to do is just—hoist him," Wilson explained. "Nobody else has to go inside. If they find him inside ... whatever's on the other side of that window, at least he's in the building. We'll just get him up there, drop him—" Somewhere near his feet, House moaned in protest. "Gently," Wilson added. "Then we get out of here and act like none of this ever happened."

"We barely got him from the car," Cameron said, kneeling at House's side and sounding seriously doubtful for the first time since the start of their expedition. "He's not exactly being cooperative."

"Do you have a stepladder in your trunk?" Wilson asked Foreman angrily. "There's no other choice! Now help me lift him!"

"I did _not_ sign on for this," Foreman muttered, but he knelt to help Wilson haul House upward without further complaint.

With Chase, and with an impressive effort from Cameron, they managed to get him to shoulder height. Whether or not he wanted to go back inside the building, House's sense of self-preservation must have kicked in, as he offered some measure of help by grasping the windowsill.

They were only a few inches from victory—House halfway through the window, borne up by Wilson, Chase, Foreman, and Cameron—when the beam of a flashlight shone on their sweating faces and Wilson's blood ran cold.

"Well," said the voice behind the flashlight, gruff but obviously pleased. "This I did not expect."

The owner of the voice lowered his flashlight just enough for Wilson, squinting, to make out the face of Detective Michael Tritter.

Someone shifted, and House fell from the window, landing on top of Wilson and, judging from the squawks of surprise and pain from behind him, at least two other members of his team.


	12. Chapter 12

The last thing he remembered was Wilson, standing in his room at Sea Harbor, looking stricken and nauseous.

Now he was in a hospital, but not his hospital. Somewhere else. Somewhere new.

Also, his wrist was cuffed to the bed rail.

"Well, Mr. House," a nurse chirped as she flipped pages on his chart with the efficiency of a dealer shuffling cards in Vegas, "you seem to be doing much better, so pretty soon we can get you on your way!" The smile she turned on him was cheerful in a way that conveyed exactly what she thought of him, and it wasn't much.

He made a noise that only barely resembled human sound. "Where am I?"

"You're in the hospital, Mr. House," the nurse said, leaning over his bed and speaking to him like he was a small child. The position afforded him a decent view down the front of her shirt, but the goods were a disappointment. "But don't worry, you'll be fine soon."

_Nurse Ratched_, he thought, and then shut his eyes. "What happened?"

"You were in a little 'accident' outside of the rehab center," Ratched explained patiently. He could actually hear the scare quotes around the word _accident_. "In fact, you're in a little bit of trouble! It seems you tried to make a run for it."

House closed his eyes as his stomach sank. Yeah, that sounded familiar. Very, very familiar.

_Oh, shit._

* * *

"Fuckin' pigs pulled me over on I-95," Sugar Ray said, scratching furiously at her knotted hair with both hands, when House met her at the county courthouse later that same day. "I almost made it to New York, too. What happened to you?"

"Wilson took me back to rehab," House said.

"Oh, man, your _boyfriend_ turned you in? That's _cold_."

His lip curled in distaste. _Boyfriend._ Not anymore, he wasn't. "He actually tried to sneak me back in."

"Like that's any better."

Her disdain was palpable. House tried to agree, but to his dismay, he found himself kind of taking Wilson's side on this one. But then Sugar Ray was a minor, and she wasn't in rehab at the behest of the law. For her, the worst thing that could happen for getting caught on the outside was a stint in juvie and not being allowed to return to Sea Harbor, and for her, that wasn't much of a punishment.

House himself was in a slightly different boat.

"He was trying to help," he explained. "In his ... own way."

"With friends like that, man," Sugar Ray said, leaving the statement open-ended.

_Indeed_, House thought. Although he had to admit that, in some ways, he'd trained his friends pretty well. Smuggling him back into Sea Harbor had been a brilliant plan, even if it had failed miserably. None of his team would have gone along with that when he'd first hired them. Well—maybe Chase would have. Still, although House was on his way to trial again—along with Wilson and the kids—he nonetheless felt a warm sense of pride at the knowledge that, over the years, he'd so thoroughly corrupted the people in his life.

Assuming, of course, that after everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, Wilson was still in his life.

But even the satisfaction of a job well done was no substitute for Vicodin—or methadone, for that matter, or morphine—and the marginally elevated Buprenorphine he was on now wasn't much help, either. Especially when it came to once again facing jail time.

Not to mention facing Howard.

"Good morning, sunshine," House said when his old attorney approached with a haggard-looking Wilson, Cameron, Chase, and Foreman—and one pissed-off Cuddy—following in his wake. His employees looked petrified. Wilson stared at House with an expression of such naked regret and longing that House had to turn away.

"Not another word," Howard silenced him with a raised hand. "I am here only out of respect for Dr. Cuddy, who for some reason seems to think the lot of you are worth it."

"And we're very, very grateful," Wilson said, almost oozing deference.

"Shut up," Cuddy ordered. "Let's go get this over with and see if we can't save at least _some_ of your careers."

* * *

They entered the courtroom for the second time in two months. For House, the experience was starting to become familiar, and whether it was the drugs he was on or the pain he was in or just the fact that he was starting to lose the ability to care about what happened to him, he went to his seat with a sense of calm resignation. A glance at Wilson and his team showed that they did not share his zen perspective.

At the back of the room, Tritter lurked, a self-satisfied sneer on his face. Only a firm grip on House's shoulder from Cuddy kept him from approaching the cop and doing something he knew he'd regret. Something else he knew he'd regret, anyway. He told himself that the sheer number of nights the smug creep must have spent staking out his and Wilson's apartment, waiting for something to use against them, should be punishment enough. He still wanted to break Tritter's teeth with his cane.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," House said aloud when the order came to rise and a familiar middle-aged Asian woman walked into the courtroom in a black robe.

"You've _got_ to be kidding me," the judge repeated a moment later when she took her seat and caught sight of him. "Didn't I deal with you just a few months ago?"

"What can I say?" House said. "I missed your smiling face."

The judge made a face that was distinctly not smiling and began paging through the documents in front of her. "Oh, look, you've brought some friends this time," she remarked. "How charming. All right, bailiff. Let's do this thing."

Sugar Ray—_Samantha_—stood with her own lawyer to plead guilty to the single charge of unauthorized use of an automobile, a fourth degree crime.

"I see that this is your fourth time to be charged with this particular offense," the judge said, peering at Sugar Ray over the top of her glasses.

House raised his eyebrows. Sugar Ray tried to speak, but her attorney raised his hand and shushed her with a "Yes, your Honor."

"You have a joyriding problem," the judge observed.

"I got places to be," Sugar Ray said. Her attorney shot her a hard glare, and she shrugged in response.

"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to learn to start taking the bus," the judge said. "The fine is $1,000 and the postponement of your driver's license for ten years. The defendant is released to the custody of her parents or to the Sea Harbor facility, assuming they're still willing to take her." She turned to Howard. "Counselor?"

Cameron, Chase, Foreman, and Wilson each stood, one after the other, all four of them looking like they'd spent the night in a jail cell—which, of course, they had. Cuddy, seated on a bench behind them, looked sleep-deprived and murderous. One at a time, they all pleaded no contest to charges of disorderly conduct.

"While I applaud your efforts to return Dr. House to where he belonged," the judge told them, "I have to say that the way you chose to go about it was ..." She paused, seemingly at a loss for words. "Well, _unorthodox_, to say the least. As first-time offenders, you are each hereby fined a sum of $500. Next time you come across an escaped prisoner, do the court a favor: call the police."

The look Wilson gave House as the four of them retreated to their seats was indescribable. There was no anger, not anymore: they had passed that point. But there was something in Wilson's face, in his eyes, that made House think that Wilson was looking at him as a free man for the last time in what would be a very, very long time.

House pleaded guilty to stealing the car. That was the easy part. As a first offense—and he was a little embarrassed about that, considering Sugar Ray had done it _four times_ and had clearly been the brains of their escape attempt—the penalty was a fine of a few hundred dollars and loss of his license for a year.

Which was fine. He wouldn't need a driver's license where he was going.

"Onto a more serious matter," the judge said, "you stole the car in the process of fleeing your court-mandated intervention program, which you originally entered on the condition that you complete eight weeks of in-patient treatment. Counselor, as you know, the presumptive course of action here is for the court to permanently revoke your client's special probation, terminate his participation in the treatment program, and return his case to trial under the original charges, with additional charges for the parole violation."

House leaned heavily on his cane and stared straight forward at the judge's bench. Howard, his team, and Cuddy—and Wilson—were all seated behind him. He couldn't bring himself to look back.

"Your Honor," Howard said, "I've submitted documentation of my client's altered mental state at the time of this incident."

"I've read it, counselor," the judge continued. "As you know, your client's special probation is granted at the discretion of the court. I've looked over your materials and considered the nature of the offense. I've also received the documents subpoenaed from the Sea Harbor center regarding your client's progress. They don't like you very much over there, Dr. House."

Beside him, Howard sucked air through his teeth. House pressed his lips together and said nothing.

"They did confirm, though, that a prescription error led to your overdose and subsequent reckless behavior—not just your usual sunny personality," the judge added drily. "And I'm not in the business of costing the courts more money by sending you back for another trial and possible imprisonment. After reviewing the evidence and the written testimony of your physicians and counselors, and considering the likelihood of your repeating this little stunt, I think it's for the best that you return to rehab, Dr. House, assuming they'll actually take you back—for a minimum of two more weeks on top of the original eight, with your release date to be left at the discretion of your physicians and therapists at the clinic, to be followed by a year-long probationary period with biweekly blood and urine testing to ensure that you're meeting the terms of your release."

Tritter's objection boomed from the back of the courtroom. "Your Honor—"

"Detective," the judge said, raising her hand, "your input is not needed for this court proceeding. My advice to you remains that you get over it and find yourself some kind of hobby."

While House stared, Howard beamed at his victory, and behind them, either Cameron or Chase made an embarrassing squealing sound, the judge added, "In addition, Dr. House, I also sentence you to one hundred hours of community service. You're kind of a jackass."

* * *

Cameron kissed him on the front steps of the county courthouse. He thought he was about to get one from Chase, too, before Chase pulled himself together, shuffling his feet and slapping House on the back. Foreman, for his part, was considerably less willing to forgive House for this one. He stood apart from the rest of the group with his arms crossed over his chest, no doubt seething over his newly besmirched record.

Cuddy slapped him full on the face. Then she slapped Wilson, who winced but seemed to accept that as his due.

"You want to screw up your lives and your careers, fine. But how _dare_ you drag those three into your messes?" She pointed at Cameron, Chase, and Foreman. "_You_," she said to Wilson, angrily, "you should know better than anyone how nobody has an _ounce_ of common sense where he's concerned!"

"Lisa, I am so sorry," Wilson said, utterly dejected. "I know that it was insane to do what we tried to do, but—"

"Clinic hours," Cuddy said, cutting him off. "You owe me _so many_ clinic hours—"

"You'll get them," Wilson said, holding her shaking hands in his own. "I promise."

"This is so sweet," House said. He was still handcuffed and flanked on either side by cops—neither of them Tritter, who had skulked off somewhere after the gavel fell. Unfortunate, since House was in the mood to gloat. "But can we get me somewhere where I can get some decent drugs already?"

"Howard," Wilson said fervently to the attorney, "we can't thank you enough for everything you've done. If there's anything we can do for you, anything at all—"

"Please don't take this the wrong way, Dr. Wilson," Howard said, smiling thinly, "but the greatest gift you can give me is the gift of never seeing you—or Dr. House—ever again."

Wilson nodded. "I completely understand."

* * *

He returned to Sea Harbor, this time with a full police escort. Judge Lee and the state weren't screwing around anymore.

He rode quietly in the back seat of the cop car, Wilson following in his own vehicle. There had been no time to talk at the courthouse, either before the hearing or after. Not that House was in any rush to have this conversation. In point of fact, he was dreading it.

Stacy had crippled him. She had gone against his specific directions, violating his trust. But at least when he woke up, she didn't lie to him. She took responsibility for her actions. She didn't spend almost a decade pretending to have been an innocent bystander in the decision that destroyed a part of his body.

Wilson's name might not have been on the forms that sealed House's fate, but he was just as complicit. And he'd lied about it for years.

The police cruiser pulled into Sea Harbor's parking lot with Wilson a respectable full car-length behind, yet Wilson managed to make it inside the building ahead of him. He was waiting in the lobby when House was escorted inside, uncuffed, and officially transferred to the care of Sea Harbor.

House limped over to the chairs and slumped into one three seats down from Wilson, who was sitting stiffly upright, looking devastated.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Finally, Wilson took a shaky breath.

"You came home," he said quietly.

House stared at him, words tangling in his mouth. There was something in Wilson's expression: something like hope.

After a long moment, he muttered, "It's my apartment. Where the hell else was I going to go?"

Wilson's face fell almost imperceptibly. He nodded. "Yeah. That's ... valid."

House looked away, steeling himself against whatever was coming next.

"House." Wilson's voice was thick. House refused to look at him. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what else to say."

House felt his mouth tightening, his chest aching, his throat full of bile.

"I'm sorry for what we did," Wilson continued. "I'm sorry we didn't tell you that I was involved. We just tried to do what we thought was right."

"By deliberately dismissing me." The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. "By ignoring _my_ decision about _my_ leg. By doing what I specifically said _not_ to do." He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw began to hurt—his jaw and every other part of his body.

Wilson sighed, a shuddering sound. "All we wanted was for you to live. Just for you to wake up and still be with us. And when everything was over ... you were so—you were so angry. You were devastated. We never even thought about ..."

He trailed off, apparently overwhelmed by all the things he and Stacy hadn't bothered to think about.

"We just wanted you to live," he said under his breath.

"Well, great job," House barked. "I lived. Here I am," he said, gesturing at his own sorry self and the Sea Harbor lobby around them. "Ain't life _grand_?"

He looked over at Wilson and realized for the first time that Wilson's eyes were red. Dark shadows hung under them, testifying to his lack of sleep.

Wilson inhaled raggedly. "Do you still want me to get my stuff out of the apartment?"

House heard a soft noise and turned to find the source: Friedman, standing in the doorway between the lobby and the hall leading to her office. She held a clipboard in her hands and stared at the two of them, distress written all over her face.

House turned back to Wilson. "I don't care what you do," he said in a low voice. He got to his feet and limped toward Friedman, walking past her and down the hall, leaving the lobby—and Wilson—behind.

* * *

Friedman sat across her desk, staring at him on the other side, arms crossed over her ample chest. "Ah," she said. "So the bird man of Sea Harbor returns. Did you have a nice trip?"

"Sorry I didn't send you a postcard."

"I'm crushed. I thought what we had meant something." Her voice went exasperated and incredulous. "What were you even _thinking_?"

It took House a moment to process the change of tone. "I wasn't. I was drugged. You know that. How's Sugar Ray?"

"Samantha's parents decided to move her to a girls' boarding school," Friedman said.

"That should go down well."

Friedman barked a laugh. "You're telling me." Then she turned serious, and soft. "Did you manage to work things out with Wilson?" she asked, for the first time using the name House had always used for him.

House silently declined to answer.

After a few moments, she spoke again. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," House said, his voice even. "You told me what happened. I needed to know." Even if he didn't want to know. Even if not a day went by that he didn't wish he were still ignorant. Never before in his life had he wanted to be left in the dark—but maybe it would have been easier. Maybe it would have been better that way.

But he knew too well that you can't always get what you want.

When it came to his leg, it seemed he couldn't ever get what he wanted. He'd long since given up the fantasy of a life without pain. During the Vicodin years, he'd clung to a life with reduced pain, with _less_ pain, and taken the consequences as they came.

But that time was in the past now, whatever his feelings about it: he'd been arrested, thrown into jail, charged, and stuck in rehab. He was here for at least another four weeks—longer, possibly, if Friedman decided not to let him go—to be followed by twelve months of piss tests to make sure he wasn't back on the only drug that had ever worked.

He'd made it work for days, even weeks at a time without Vicodin, through sheer force of will. He would never last a year.

As he returned to his old room at Sea Harbor for the night, he thought about the future. For one month, he was under the dubious care and supervision of the clinic. He'd take their shitty Vicodin substitute and suffer, because there was no real alternative; since the "escape," he was under much stricter surveillance, so a second, permanent escape was not an option. Four more weeks of pain, of not sleeping, of not being able to concentrate, and then he'd be released on probation, back into the old life he'd temporarily left behind. One without Wilson.

Anything beyond then was blank.


	13. Chapter 13

"He's not going to make it," Wilson told Friedman. "He can't meet the terms of his parole. He can't live in that kind of pain without something to relieve it."

He had come back to Sea Harbor for therapy. He wasn't sure whether it was more or less necessary and relevant to his life now that House had effectively broken up with him. On the one hand, if they weren't together anymore, he didn't need to be a part of House's rehab program. On the other hand, if they weren't together anymore, then he had officially been through _four_ failed marriages, plus the loss of his best friend, and felt he was entitled to some personal therapy of his own.

And on another hand—if he could add a third—he still needed House to get through this rehab program, and he still needed to be a part of making it happen. They might be split up, but House still mattered to him. More than anything, really.

Yes, he absolutely, positively needed therapy.

Friedman's face was sympathetic. "How do you feel about that?"

"Lost," Wilson said.

Friedman nodded thoughtfully but said nothing.

"I'm not unaccustomed to failure," Wilson continued. "I lose patients all the time. My patients die all the time. That's the nature of oncology."

"But House isn't your patient and he isn't dying from cancer."

"No," Wilson said, and then he half-laughed, half-sobbed. "If he was, I could give him his Vicodin and nobody would care."

"He's not dying," Friedman said.

"I realize that, but—"

"Do you? Both of you are acting like this is death row."

"What happens when he leaves this place? How long do you think he'll last before he swipes some Vicodin from the hospital pharmacy, fails a urine test, and goes right back to jail? You can psychoanalyze him all you want—no disrespect—but the pain isn't going to go away. Nothing you've tried here has worked except the methadone, and that nearly killed him. He needs something to treat the pain, and nothing that works is ..."

Friedman frowned. "Nothing that works is what?"

"Excuse me," Wilson said, standing up and grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair. "There's something I need to do."

* * *

Hannah Morgenthal sat by her mother's bedside, their hands clasped, her back turned to the door that separated her from Wilson and the rest of the hospital. Through the glass, Wilson could see that they were talking, although he couldn't hear the conversation.

He looked at the floor. It was unconscionable, what he was about to do. To ask her—a child with a debilitating and possibly deadly illness, a child who until recently had been infected with a _tapeworm_, a child whose only parent was hospitalized in serious condition, and who was probably still under the influence of a severe mood-altering vitamin deficiency—to ask her what he wanted to ask went against everything he believed in as a physician and a person. Forget trying to break into Sea Harbor; _this_ was why he didn't deserve his medical license.

He shut his eyes tightly and turned away.

"Dr. Wilson?"

Hannah was frowning at him when he turned back, her expression confused but open.

He swallowed.

"I need your help," he said.

* * *

"Accelerated nerve growth," Wilson said to Cuddy. "If you put this protein with the insulation from a spinal nerve of a person with CIPA—"

"No."

"I have the donor and her mother's consent—"

"A seventeen-year-old," Cuddy said, dropping the file onto her desk with a smack. She looked up at him from her chair, radiating fury. "You want to biopsy a spinal nerve from a healthy seventeen-year-old for a science experiment—"

"This is a reputable study. The results were published in—"

"—so you and House can play _Frankenstein_ with—"

"That's not fair," Wilson said quietly from the other side of the desk. "We have a real chance here of finding a way to permanently help him. To help thousands of other people, potentially. I'm not asking for anything but permission."

"I can't give it. That you even had the brazen audacity to _ask_ the girl—" She shook her head, refusing to look him in the eye. "I knew that nothing good would come out of this. As soon as you got together—I should have known he'd drag you down with him."

Wilson swallowed. He hadn't told her, or anyone else for that matter, what had transpired between them the night House had broken out of rehab. He and House hadn't spoken since the day of the trial, since Wilson had sat in the lobby at Sea Harbor with his heart on his sleeve and had it summarily crushed.

"He hasn't," Wilson protested. "Please. I'm asking you as a friend."

"That's the problem," Cuddy said. "I'm not just your friend. I'm also your employer. And a physician, something you seem to have forgotten about. I have a responsibility to this hospital, to medical science, even if you and House think that that sort of thing doesn't apply to you—"

"I'll take care of everything. The IRB, the facilities, everything. His team will help. And it won't affect our paid work. I promise you. This is personal."

"Personal," Cuddy repeated. "Of course it's _personal_. That's the problem!" Then she abruptly stood and turned away, gazing out the window behind her chair and desk. It was snowing, the flakes stark against the dark evening sky.

Wilson came around the side of the desk and put his hand on her shoulder.

"He's not going to get better, is he," she asked flatly. It wasn't really a question.

Wilson squeezed. The tension under her skin resisted the press of his fingers. "No," he said. "At least ... not by the usual channels."

For a moment she hung her head, and then she turned to face him, her eyes shining. She blinked them away.

"You have a week," she said, hard and professional once again. Wilson fairly sagged with relief. "Do what you have to do."

* * *

"You'd have to be on immunosuppressants for the rest of your life," Wilson said. "Your _shortened_ life. There's a risk of infection. We don't even know if this will work. At best, it's experimental."

"Are you trying to talk me into this or out of it?" House was wearing his glasses, poring over the medical journal and documentation Wilson had given him. House had let him back in to Sea Harbor, but they still weren't talking about what had happened eight years ago, about the infarction, or about where they stood now. The status of their relationship was the invisible elephant in the corner of every room. Wilson was afraid to press the issue, grateful for now just to be allowed to visit and—if House would let him—to help.

"I honestly don't know," Wilson admitted.

"I'm impressed. Normally I'm the one proposing the unethical, experimental treatments."

"I'm not proud," Wilson said drily. "And Cuddy wants my head on a pike for even suggesting it."

"But she gave you the okay."

"Yes."

House was watching him, blue eyes in sharp focus, his expression calmly assessing. Wilson could read nothing in his face. He rubbed his own forehead helplessly.

"I just—" Wilson started and then stopped, frustrated. He wanted to yell; he wanted to grab House by the shoulders and shake him; he wanted to turn back the calendar to last fall and stop House from pissing off the cop, from forging the scrips—better yet, to turn back the calendar to eight years ago when the infarction had happened and stop all of this right at the beginning.

"I can't go through another trial," Wilson finally settled on saying. "I can't watch you get arrested and possibly go to prison. Not again."

House stared evenly at him. "All right," he said. "When do we start playing mad scientist?"

* * *

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him," Chase said soberly. "We have the technology."

"Shut up," Cameron mumbled without turning away from her microscope.

"Oh, lighten up." Chase pulled back from his own microscope and threw his head back with a sigh. "It's three in the morning. We've been at this for twelve hours. I feel like I'm back in med school."

"If you'd worked on something like this in med school, you'd have a Nobel Prize by now," Foreman said, cracking his neck.

"Instead of working this crappy detail," Cameron added.

Wilson turned away from the results of a PCR and put his head down on the surface of the lab table. "I can't tell you guys how much I appreciate this," he said, for what felt like the twentieth time that day, never mind the rest of the week since he'd told them about this plan. "There aren't words to say—"

"_Shut up_," Foreman, Cameron, and Chase said in unison.

* * *

The new limitations imposed by their changed relationship status—whatever was happening between them personally, they were still legally unified—were a continuing source of shock to Wilson. He couldn't participate in the transplant. Not even as an assistant to the lead surgeon. He was permitted to observe from the deck—like a relative, or like a first-year med student—but he couldn't do the surgery himself. He couldn't even be in the OR. Ethics said he was "too close" to the patient to objectively perform his duties as a physician.

He'd been House's primary care provider for ten years. Had his feelings changed? He didn't think so. They just had a different name now—and a whole new set of rules and regulations. Which House, had their positions been reversed, would no doubt try to break.

But having already tested Cuddy's patience to its limit, Wilson had thought it best to back down on this one. With Chase overseeing the surgical team he felt, if not confident, then at least as calm as he possibly could be under the circumstances.

It was a calm he had hoped came through in his face as he watched House go under, pale and unshaven, the shadows under his eyes darker than normal. They hadn't spoken. In fact, House had barely even looked at him.

That was four hours ago.

Now he watched from the deck, staring down through the tall windows at the pale fluorescent room below. Periodically, one of the doctors or nurses would glance up at him, their faces hidden behind surgical masks, expressions unreadable. He'd been here hundreds of times before, watching over his patients' surgeries through a wall of glass like a distant, disinterested god. Yet for all the times he'd felt his stomach knot with tension at the sight of a well-liked patient going under the knife, nothing before had ever felt like this.

His hands were shaking. Maybe the ethics committee had been right to bench him.

Foreman placed a steaming paper cup of coffee next to him. Around hour six, Cameron brought a salad. He didn't touch it.

Shortly after the seven hour mark, Chase looked up at him from the OR floor and raised a thumbs-up in his direction. With all but his eyes hidden, it was the only indication of how the surgery had gone.

They were finishing up. Suturing the leg, bandaging the wound, tidying up the mess they'd made. Wilson rested his forehead against the cold glass window and shut his eyes briefly. There was nothing more any of them could do. This had been the last chance, a last-ditch attempt to give House back something resembling a normal life. There was nowhere else to go.

House was wheeled out of the OR. Wilson rubbed at his bleary eyes and stayed in the observation deck a few minutes longer, staring down at the room below, now empty but for the nurses and assistants clearing the area so the cleaning staff could go in after them and sanitize everything. Make everything pristine again.

Eventually, he went back down the stairs and went to find House's room.

* * *

House woke up that night around nine and, after a few semi-lucid minutes, passed out again around 9:20.

Wilson fell asleep in his chair, his feet propped up on another chair, sometime after ten, and drifted in and out for the rest of the night as nurses came and went and House stirred and stilled. The smell of coffee woke him for good at seven, and he opened his eyes to see Cuddy checking House's vitals.

"How's everything look?" His voice came out rough with sleep or the lack thereof. He took a long drink from the Styrofoam cup she'd set next to him. The coffee had cooled somewhat, but he didn't care.

"Fine," Cuddy said. "I guess we won't know whether it worked until ..."

"We don't really know," Wilson said quietly.

In his hospital bed, House slept on.

* * *

He was discharged 72 hours later. The state of New Jersey didn't care one way or another about their experimental treatment; House was still obliged to spend the next three weeks in the care of a licensed rehabilitation facility, just as long as he was well enough to be out of intensive care. With his leg bandaged, and a wheelchair to keep him from walking on it, he was taken back to Sea Harbor by ambulance, the status of the transplant still unknown.

Once again, the radio silence set in. Although this wasn't House's first admission to Sea Harbor, the weeklong blackout period held true, potentially groundbreaking surgery notwithstanding.

So Wilson waited. Cuddy brought him food. Foreman brought him booze. Chase and Cameron brought coffee and stilted conversation. Only the new understanding that this was truly their last chance stood to distinguish these seven agonizing days from the seven days two months ago when he'd first checked House into rehab.

Also, the fact that this time, House called the day after the blackout period ended.

"House," Wilson said in lieu of _hello_, quietly closing the door to his office. It was nine in the morning. Maybe people would think he wasn't in yet.

There was silence on the other end of the line, and then, quietly: "My leg hurts."

Wilson sagged in his desk chair. "It's only been a week. It's too soon to notice any change—"

"Not really, but thanks for playing along," House snapped.

"_Yes_, really," Wilson snapped right back. "It's remotely possible that you could have felt some improvement at this stage, but just because you don't doesn't mean the surgery didn't work. Are you going to physical therapy?"

"Yes, _Mom_," House said. "And I'm eating all my veggies and taking my vitamins, too."

"Give it time," Wilson begged. "You've been in pain for eight years. You can wait a few more weeks for the cure. And—thank you."

Quiet. "For what?"

"For calling when you were supposed to. It's a start."

"Low standards," House said. "They're key to all my relationships."

With a knot in his throat, Wilson asked, "Are we ... in a relationship?"

House didn't answer him for such a long stretch of time that Wilson was tempted to pull the phone from his ear to check if the connection had been dropped—or if House had simply hung up on him. He didn't, afraid that the moment his ear was away would be the moment House would speak.

Finally, the answer came. "I don't know."

Wilson closed his eyes. He couldn't say he hadn't been expecting that. "Okay," he said.

"I have to go."

Wilson said goodbye. The phone clicked and went dead without another word.

Then he put his head down on his desk and stayed that way for a long, long time.

* * *

He was able to visit House two days later. He didn't even have to ask: from the moment he saw House's face in the Sea Harbor lounge, he knew. There had been no change.

They sat on a couch with sinking cushions, watching _Celebrity Jeopardy_ in silence, a solid two feet of air between them. House uselessly kneaded the scarred flesh of his thigh.

* * *

When House's team saw Wilson the next day at the hospital, he shook his head before any of them could speak.

Cuddy snuck up and ambushed him before he could turn her away with a similar gesture.

"Nothing," he said. "He says there's no improvement."

"It's been less than two weeks," Cuddy cautioned. "It's too soon to give up."

"He should have felt something by now," Wilson muttered. "What do we do if this doesn't work?"

"Move onto the next idea."

"There is no next idea. There's a brick wall. Nothing comes after this."

"Wilson."

From his seat behind his desk, he looked up at her pained face and reddened eyes, waiting for her to finish—but like himself with House, she had nothing to say.

* * *

Two weeks from the day of the surgery, Wilson went back to Sea Harbor. An attendant led him to the so-called music room, where House was seated in front of a silent piano, staring emptily at the keys. House looked up when Wilson came into the room. His expression was strange and inscrutable.

"What is it?" Wilson asked.

House shifted on the piano bench, using his hands to move the dead right leg. He stared down at it. "It feels numb."

Wilson stood frozen by the doorway. "Numb?"

House rubbed his thigh where the scars, old and new, lay beneath the fabric of his jeans. "There's less sensation. It hurts less."

"It hurts less?"

"Are you just going to repeat everything I say, or do you think you might have something useful to contribute to this discussion?"

"It's still too soon," Wilson said automatically. "We don't know how well—"

"Wilson. Shut up. It worked. Or it's working," House said. He looked over, his face still unreadable. "Congratulations."

Wilson sagged with relief, grateful for the wall behind him that kept him from collapsing. House was okay. Or he would be, with time. "I should be congratulating you," he said.

House looked back down at the piano keys and shrugged. "_Your_ medical breakthrough. Just put me in the acknowledgments when you publish your report."

He started playing, something sad and mournful, the tune vaguely familiar to Wilson, although he couldn't quite place it. Wilson watched as House's fingers moved over the keys. He'd always loved House's hands.

Wilson wasn't dumb; he knew when he was being dismissed. So this was it, then. He couldn't make things right between them. He'd never be able to make things right. All he could do was this, this nerve transplant, the only way to even start to undo the damage. At least the physical damage. The rest was a lost cause.

"I'm sorry," he said, barely audible over the piano. Only the momentary hesitation in House's playing, the slight break in the rhythm of the music that most people wouldn't even notice, gave any indication that House had heard him.

Wilson left the music room and Sea Harbor without another word.


	14. Chapter 14

"So I hear you're feeling better," Friedman said at the start of the next session.

"And ready to get the hell out of Dodge," House answered with phony cheer.

She smiled. "If only it were that easy."

"It _could_ be," House said. "I won't tell if you won't."

"You've already spent two months of your life here, not to mention thousands of dollars of Dr. Wilson's money. Why not complete the program and get well so we don't have to see you back in rehab in a few months or years?"

"I'm already well," House said, gesturing to his leg with a theatrical flourish. "See? Ta-da."

"Up here," Friedman said, tapping the side of her head with a single index finger. "You've made a lot of progress, Greg, but I'm not sure you're ready to go back and face the real world. I don't think you have all the tools yet to cope."

"I have a cane for walking and a limited prescription for breakthrough pain. I have a job and a place to live. I'm all set."

"You have a long history of drug abuse, and you work at a hospital," Friedman said. "It's not that simple. The pain issues may be resolved, but there's more to you than just that. You have years of addiction and addictive behavior to overcome. That doesn't change overnight."

"I haven't wanted Vicodin in almost a month. I haven't _needed_ Vicodin in almost a month."

"Eventually, you will. That's how addiction works. And when it happens next time, there won't be another second chance."

House cast his eyes heavenward in response.

"I know you don't have a lot of respect for me as a professional," Friedman continued. "That's fine, I know it's not personal. But sometimes the system can work, if you're willing to let it. So will you do that for me? Will you try to remember that? Do that for me, and I'll get you out of here on time," she said.

"And if not—well, you're mine until _at least_ May first." Friedman bared her teeth. "Better get used to it."

* * *

Wilson had come inside the building with a smattering of snowflakes on his hair and coat, bringing the chill with him. Now Wilson paced anxiously while House looked over the case file he'd brought. Other inmates milled around them, keeping their distance.

"How's the leg?" Wilson's tone was friendly and professional, guarded and removed, but House could hear the undercurrents beneath it. The dark circles under Wilson's eyes hadn't gone away.

"Fine. Patient has hemolytic uremic syndrome," House said, closing the file folder with finality and passing it over to Wilson, careful not to let their fingers accidentally touch.

"Any breakthrough pain?" Wilson asked, accepting the folder.

"In the HUS patient? You'd have to ask him."

"House."

House looked out the window at the gray, snow-covered world. "The leg is fine," he said again.

His leg _was_ fine. He was adjusting to the new sensation of having no sensation. Physically, he hadn't felt this good in years.

"And ... everything else?"

"April is the cruelest month," House said flatly.

It _was_ a cruel April, and not just because he was supposed to have been back at home by then, playing his video games and tormenting his patients and messing with Wilson. Instead, he was still stuck in Sea Harbor, miserable and basically divorced.

Not officially, of course. There had been no legal changes to their status. In fact, they hadn't even talked about it in weeks, not since Wilson had asked him as directly as he could and House had admitted that he just didn't know. He still didn't know. And he hated not knowing.

It had taken him more than five years to start to forgive Stacy. Five years, and even then—even when she'd been ready to leave her husband to be with him again—he knew he could never get past what had happened, what she had done.

What she and Wilson had done.

So they didn't speak of it. Wilson kept coming back, day after day, like some lovesick puppy, bringing him cases and inquiring about his leg. He knew Wilson and his team didn't really need his input on everything, and they certainly didn't need it to come from House personally. Yet he took the files, dutifully looked through them, and gave his conclusions for Wilson to relay back to Princeton-Plainsboro. He was tired. He didn't have the heart to drive Wilson away; the anger just wasn't in him anymore.

Wilson stood behind him. House could feel him there without looking, hear his quiet breathing. "Is there anything you need?"

What he needed was for none of this to have ever happened. What he needed was to have his life back again.

"Nothing you can give me," he said.

And so once again, Wilson left.

* * *

Friedman stared at him for a long time at the start of their next session. "How are you doing?" she finally asked.

House stared back and pointedly did not answer the question. "Why don't you tell me what it is you need me to do in order to sign me out of here?"

Friedman sighed. "There's no trick to this, Greg. I just need to be able to believe that you can manage yourself when you return to your normal life, that you can go back to your routines without succumbing to drug abuse again."

"You don't want to believe that I can do this," House accused.

"On the contrary, I want very much to believe that. I just haven't seen you demonstrate it."

"How can I demonstrate that I can deal with the real world when _you won't let me go back to the real world_?"

"This is a part of the real world, Greg."

"This," he said slowly, "is a nuthouse."

"To which you are _extremely_ well-suited," Friedman countered. "And speaking of nuts—when was the last time you spoke to Wilson? You can interpret that any way you want to, by the way."

House faked an obnoxious burst of laughter and then sneered at her again. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Have you worked anything out with him?"

"I _said_—"

"I think you're making a mistake."

House seethed. "He crippled me and lied about it for eight years. You think I shouldn't be a _little_ bit mad about that?"

"You certainly have a right to be angry. Do you remember when we talked about grief? Mourning?"

House slammed his fist down on the surface of her desk, knowing exactly where she was trying to go with this round of bullshit. "This isn't something you just get over! This is my _life_. Everything I've been through, everything I'm still going through—it all comes back to what they did to my leg."

Friedman watched him quietly. "Yes," she said, "your leg is what started everything. Do you want it to be what ends everything, too?"

House stared back. "What kind of question is that?"

"You had a life. Then that life changed. You didn't ask for that change, you didn't want it, but it happened just the same. It's okay to be sad about the way things used to be. But at some point, you have to accept the change. You have to move on."

"Why?" House demanded.

Friedman's voice was even. "Because otherwise it's going to kill you."

He scoffed. "You don't think that's a bit overdramatic?"

She looked at him for a long moment, until the weight of her stare became uncomfortable. House shifted in his seat.

"You've been holding onto so much bitterness and resentment for so many years," she said.

House looked at her steadily. "You want me to forgive him."

"I want you to stop living in the past. There's so much darkness there, Greg. Leave it behind."

House lumbered to his feet, still awkward with the new changes in his leg. "It's not that easy," he said.

"No," Friedman agreed. "It's not."

* * *

Physical therapy with his new mutant leg was no less of a pain in the ass than it had been any other time, but it was far less of a pain in his thigh, and that was what counted.

The numbness was more than welcome, but it was also a hazard. It wasn't as if the lack of sensation made it easier for House to injure himself. He still couldn't walk without the cane. But he couldn't feel anything in that area, so if something were to happen—if he were to injure himself—he'd have none of the usual early warning signs.

This was a risk House was more than willing to take.

Without the searing burn in his damaged thigh, House went to PT at Sea Harbor. He didn't go quietly, but he went, and abused the staff therapist only enough to make sure their sessions never went over the minimum allotted time.

It also gave him something to focus on other than Wilson. He sought distractions wherever he could, almost unconsciously. His overactive brain couldn't help dissecting everything that had happened, not just since Wilson's betrayal, not just since House had learned about it, but from the beginning of their friendship. From the day they'd met.

He let the physical therapist lead him through stretches and flexes, pushing the remaining muscles in his numb leg to their limit, and he thought. The more he thought, the more he hated what he saw in himself.

And the more he wanted something to numb his mind, too.

Alone in his room, his fingers twitched involuntarily over his scarred thigh, the motion as familiar as it was unnecessary. There was no pain there to rub, to futilely try and massage away—and no bottle of pills in his pocket, either.

Instead of digging his fingers into the damaged muscle, as he would have just a few weeks earlier, he tapped out an erratic beat on his dead thigh and started paging through the _NEJM_ again, determined not to think about anything else but other people's illnesses. The kind he could handle. The kind he could cure.

* * *

The monthly bonfires continued all year long, delaying only for extreme weather and heavy rain. House tromped through the mud and melting snow that April along the makeshift trail from the Sea Harbor residential center to the fire pit.

Seating was available around the pit for those patients and staff members who couldn't stay on their feet for long periods of time. House took a lawn chair, dragging it a few feet back from the center of the action before settling in it, his cane between his knees.

He pulled his coat in tighter against the evening chill. Having these things outside in the freeze was insane, fire or no fire. Around the fire, patients—some he recognized and some he didn't—assembled for affirmations. As usual, he did his level best to ignore them.

_I am strong. I am worthy. I am loved._

The communal airing of false hopes was trite and irritating, but he had to admit that he actually liked the bonfire aspect. It appealed to his perverse, destructive side. Discarding the flammable reminders of the past—a sort of funeral pyre of mistakes and missed chances.

He could relate to that.

Friedman, looking like the Pillsbury doughboy in her coat, hat, and scarf, stood near him, applauding the other patients as they stepped up to speak.

_I believe in myself. I can do this. I have a future._

Friedman beamed at him and approached through the mud and muck. "Greg, you've been quiet at these sessions. Do you want to say anything this time?"

House stared blankly for a moment, and then got to his feet. There was a brief second of awed silence as the rest of the assembled realized he was standing to speak to the group for the first time since his arrival nine weeks earlier.

He took a breath, widened his eyes, and shouted, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!"

He ignored the dissatisfied grumblings as he sat back down again.

Friedman shook her head. "People _do_ like you, Greg," she said. "For whatever it's worth to you."

House stared at the fire, letting its heat burn his retinas.

Softly, under his breath, he said, "I'm an addict. And ... it's a problem."

* * *

Someone had tuned the piano in the music therapy room since he'd last tried to play it. Now the notes rang true, forming the familiar melodies they were meant to instead of the sickening carnival ride sounds they'd been before.

His fingers moved confidently over the faux ivory keys. It felt different, somehow, playing with a body free of pain. Looser, maybe. He'd already noticed that he was walking differently, but that was expected; although the muscles in his leg were still damaged beyond repair, neutralizing the nerve damage allowed him to get around with minimal pain, and that was reflected in the way he carried himself. He slept better now, too, with less tension in his limbs.

With no music to read, he watched his hands instead. Ten fingers, dusting of hair, inexpensive watch. His nails needed to be cut. His eyes settled on his left hand.

"_No_," he said aloud, before the thought had fully formed in his mind, but it was useless.

He swore, slammed his hands down on the keys once again, and limped out of the music room and straight to the phones. He dialed the number from memory.

"Lisa Cuddy."

"I need a favor."

"So what else is new?"

"This one's legal. Well. Sort of legal."

Cuddy sighed the sigh of the eternally put-upon. "I'm not getting you drugs, licit or otherwise. You're in rehab—"

"It's not drugs. It's—personal."

"Why are you asking me and not Wilson?" she asked, suspicious frown audible through the phone line.

"I can't ask Wilson. You're going to like this. There's years worth of comedic material for you in this."

"All right," she said, the suspicion still not entirely evaporated. "But I reserve the right to refuse."

"You won't need to," House said. "Just shut up and listen."

* * *

They were outside, alone, leaning on the rail of the residential center's deck on the first warm day of the year. Snow still clung to the ground in patches, dotting the yard behind the building.

Wilson stood a few meek feet away from him, head hanging. They hadn't said a word to each other since Wilson's arrival. That had been twenty minutes ago, and if House was perfectly honest, the silence was starting to drag on just a little.

For the last ten minutes, he'd been trying to figure out how to break it.

He tapped his fingers rhythmically on the gray wood railing and after another minute managed to say, under his breath but audible, "I don't want you to move out."

He heard Wilson inhale, dragging the air into his lungs like he hadn't taken a proper breath in weeks. "Okay," he said on the exhale.

"I'm not saying I forgive you," House quickly amended.

He looked over to find Wilson watching him, mouth closed and eyes tired.

House grumbled, "I'm just saying I'm working on it."

Wilson nodded and kept nodding, looking hopelessly lost. The nod turned into a headshake. "I don't—should I ask why?" he asked, his voice plaintive and confused.

House looked away, out at the green-brown, snow-spotted lawn, fighting against the urge to joke this one away.

"What we had," he finally said, still looking out over the yard, fumbling for the words. "It was ... good. This thing," he tried to elaborate, gesturing between the two of them without looking at Wilson. "It worked."

"Yeah," Wilson said next to him. "It did."

"What happened to my leg—felt like it took away everything. _Everything_: not just my leg, my entire body, my independence—" He clenched his right hand into a fist to keep from reaching for the pills that were no longer there.

Then he dug into his pocket, withdrew the ring that had been sitting there for the last two days, and held it out, pinched between his index finger and thumb. He still couldn't bring himself to look at Wilson.

"I don't want to have the rest of my life defined by the worst thing that ever happened to me," he said.

He felt rather than saw Wilson take the ring from between his fingers.

"I think," House said, "this might be my last chance at changing that."

A minute passed with neither of them speaking.

At long last, Wilson cleared his throat. "This is ... nice," he marveled.

"Cuddy," House explained, or deflected, pulling the other ring from his pocket and sliding it on his left ring finger, trying not to think about it. What the hell was he doing? He felt the weight of Wilson's eyes on him.

"So this is about ... starting fresh," Wilson said uncertainly.

"Rehab rules," House said brightly, finally looking over at Wilson, who was still holding his own ring between his fingers and examining it like he'd never seen one before. Like he hadn't in fact worn three separate ones over the years.

"You ..." Wilson stumbled over his words, staring at the gold band. "You wouldn't actually want a real ceremony, would you?"

"Only if it was exactly like that scene in The Princess Bride. 'Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togevvah today'—"

"House. Seriously."

"Just shut up and put the damn ring on already."

Wilson shut up and put the damn ring on.

After a few minutes, House spoke quietly, under his breath. "I don't want to screw this up."

Wilson's eyes were dark and for a long moment, he didn't speak.

"I was going to say that you won't," he finally said. "But—actually, maybe you will. I don't know. Maybe I'll screw it up. Not like it would be the first time for either of us."

House ducked his head, silently agreeing.

"I don't know what's going to happen," Wilson said. "But I don't want to screw this up either."

"Okay," House said.

Five minutes stretched out between them. House was starting to feel chilled. Then Wilson cleared his throat again.

"What happened," he said, "with Stacy. With your leg. I will never—" He broke off, swallowing, looking desolate for a moment before recovering. "Nothing like that will ever happen again."

House nodded once. "Noted."

Wilson turned to face him full on. "I promise to try to make you as happy as I possibly can, without committing any major felonies, and to do my best to prevent you from committing the same," he said, a bit awkwardly.

House smirked, still leaning forward on the rail. "I promise to take your feelings into consideration before I steal anymore drugs."

"Or get shot."

"Or get shot," House agreed.

"Or stick a thermometer up a cop's ass."

"I promise to take your feelings into consideration before sticking anything in anyone's ass," House said, giving Wilson a one-fingered salute that, while appropriate for this particular pledge, would not have been approved by any established scouting or military organization.

"Or do anything else impossibly stupid to compromise your life or your career. Or my career. Or Cuddy's. Or the careers of—"

"Okay, okay," House said. "Got it. I'm a perfect angel. Pinky swear," House said, offering a different finger this time.

"I don't want you to be an angel. Just a little moderation in your depraved insanity—that would be a nice change."

House watched the snow melt. Wilson leaned back against the rail, trying to be subtle about checking out the ring and mostly failing. House looked over at him and smirked again. He stuck out his own ring-bearing hand, clenched in a fist. Wilson matched the gesture with his own left hand and cleared his throat.

"By our powers combined," Wilson said soberly, "we are ..."

"Captain Civil Union Scam."

"Captain Rehab," Wilson murmured.

House rolled his eyes and grumbled, but he clinked his ring against Wilson's just the same.

* * *

"Okay, coping strategies on the outside," Friedman said. "Let's go. When you're feeling unhappy?"

"I go make someone else unhappy."

"When you're stressed?"

"I make someone else stressed."

"When you feel the need to use Vicodin?"

"I drink a 40 and snort coke off a stripper's ass. No, wait, I know this one ..."

"You could take this a little more seriously," Friedman said wistfully.

"Then you _really_ wouldn't believe me," House answered.

"Fair enough. Weekly check-ins?"

"I piss in a cup every Thursday."

"Good," she murmured. "Who's in charge of your pills for breakthrough pain?"

"Wilson. He keeps me on a short leash. And yes, I do mean that to sound the way it sounds."

Friedman took some notes. House eyed the clock. Wilson would be there in thirty minutes, and not to visit. This time, they were out of here—for good.

"How'd I do?" House asked.

Friedman sighed and looked up from her paperwork. "Greg, there's not enough therapy in the world."


	15. Epilogue

House was already outside when Wilson pulled up to Sea Harbor for the last time, sitting on a bench outside the front entrance with his bag at his feet. It was finally spring, if still on the chilly side. House was wearing a scarf.

He was also sucking almost compulsively on a lollipop. As Wilson got out of the car and approached, he could see three spent lollipop sticks lined up on the bench next to House's leg. "Been waiting long?" he asked mildly.

"You're late," House half-growled, stalking towards the car and leaving Wilson to collect the bag.

"I am not—" Wilson looked at his watch and sighed. He wasn't late. He bent to grab the duffel and slung it over his shoulder. After a moment's thought, he scooped up the three lollipop sticks as well, and pitched them in the trashcan a few feet away.

House was already sitting behind the wheel when Wilson got back to the car, adjusting the mirrors to his liking.

"Good to see you, too," Wilson said as he slid into the passenger seat.

"Did you change my radio presets?" House complained, pressing buttons and making faces at each new burst of disagreeable sound.

Wilson ignored him; it was a rhetorical question anyway. "I note that your oral fixation is as bad as ever," he said as House pulled the sucker from his mouth with an exaggerated slurping noise.

"Lucky for you," House leered at him.

* * *

Wilson slept like the dead. While this had been useful at many points during his life, most notably in the dorms in college, it had proved detrimental when he'd crashed on House's sofa in the past, and living with House this time was no different.

By the time he woke up, both his wrists and both his ankles were already secured to the posts of the bed, apparently by—

"Those are my ties!" he protested.

"These," House declared, "are ugly ties."

Wilson craned his neck and looked in horror at the silk Gucci jacquard binding his right wrist. "That's a hundred and fifty dollar tie!"

"It's an ugly hundred and fifty dollar tie."

House was attempting to double-knot the one at Wilson's left ankle. He'd never been a Boy Scout, which only made the damage worse.

"I suppose handcuffs are now out of the question?" Wilson asked, yanking his left arm to punctuate the question. "Remind you too much of your time in a holding cell?"

House patted Wilson's bound foot and gave him a sly smile. "You'd look good in handcuffs."

"You're not the only person with that opinion," Wilson said, thinking about how badly certain members of the Princeton Police Department wanted to see both of them in cuffs. Possibly leg irons. Most certainly gagged.

"My motives, on the other hand, are pure," House said, apparently thinking the same thing. "Well. Sort of pure. We have research to do, Doctor. Sexual performance following experimental regenerative nerve transplant. Studies must be conducted. Think of the paper you can write afterward."

"I don't think this would clear the institutional review—oh," Wilson groaned as House took his cock in hand and gently squeezed.

"And I'm the only one who might actually get to see you in handcuffs," House continued. "Unless you want to confess to a torrid love affair with Tritter," he added.

Wilson grimaced at the ceiling. "Jeez, you really know how to kill a mood."

"Leave it," House said, clambering atop the bed, sticking his tongue in Wilson's mouth and changing the mood entirely.

* * *

Cuddy had been emphatic that Princeton-Plainsboro's "Spring Fling" had absolutely nothing to do with House and was not even close to approximating a welcome back party, let alone a wedding reception. The fact that it was the first time in fifteen years that a "Spring Fling" had been held at the hospital meant, according to her, absolutely nothing.

"There will be beer," she'd promised.

In the end, Wilson had to shanghai House into attending, telling him they were going out for lunch and then child-locking the car doors until he'd driven them directly up to the grill. From there, the smell of barbecue did the rest of the work for him. In some ways, House had always been easy.

In other ways, not so much.

"Yes, I gave him a ring," House explained to his assembled team. Foreman, Cameron, and Chase seemed glad to see him, Wilson thought, considering that House had got them each fined $500 for their role in his escape from and return to rehab.

Wilson, all too aware of where this was going, intervened. "House, don't—"

Cameron's eyes widened. "Oh my god—"

"Sure, it was a cock ring, but it was still a ring," House said.

"I don't need to know this!" Foreman yelled.

"Oh my god," Cameron said again, her face a picture of confused, titillated horror.

House continued. "Then I bought some restraints—"

"I'm leaving!" Foreman stood and announced.

"—and bound him in holy matrimony. Or maybe just in leather."

Foreman made a beeline for the coolers of alcohol, spasming like he'd been electrocuted.

"Please stop," Cameron moaned into her hands.

"He's lying," Wilson said.

"No I'm not."

"Yes, he is."

Chase stood at rapt attention, grinning with a pen between his teeth. Wilson didn't want to know what was going on there.

Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital had a fantastic gossip network and a very short memory. The ten weeks House had been away had apparently been enough for most of the hospital staff to forget the litany of insults and indignities House had wrought over the years of his employment. Everyone was friendly to him, warmly welcoming him back from rehab.

When Cuddy had last seen House, she'd slapped him. Now, Wilson watched as she embraced him, holding him tightly until House reached down and patted her ass. She pulled away with a sour expression.

"Feel better, House," she said, handing him a mixed bouquet of flowers with a "get well" card. "Because you start making up your lost clinic hours on Monday."

In the spirit of the occasion, House threw the bouquet. Unfortunately, he threw it at his team, hitting Chase in the back of the head, causing him to spill his drink all over Cameron's shirt.

Wilson shook his head and decided not to throw a first anniversary party.

**Author's Note:**

> I posted A Modest Proposal in 2007. It took me three months to write that one and three years to write this one. I don't know, either. There were some computer crashes, some data loss, some personal issues. I almost gave up on this story a dozen times, but it's something I've wanted to write since before I even finished A Modest Proposal, and there aren't words enough to express the sheer relief I feel at having finally completed it. To anyone who might have been waiting for it all this time: I am sincerely, terribly sorry.
> 
> I am indebted to so many people for help with this, and I've been working on it for so long that I'm sure I'm going to forget someone, so let me apologize for that first. I am so sorry. I suck. This is the least of the many things at which I suck. Nonetheless, thank yous: to Nos, for Round One beta; to Zulu, for Round Two beta; to theficklepickle, for the speediest beta turnaround in history; to bell, for utterly—and appropriately—kicking my ass; to squonk, for catching things nobody else caught; and to Karaokegal, for reading and then rereading this thing, all the way through, even though she knew it would give her fluff hives, and for keeping my spirits buoyed when all I wanted to do was throw in the towel—and then doing the same over and over again while I wallowed in despair. None of these wonderful people is responsible for any problems you might have found in the finished manuscript.
> 
> Finally, thank you to every one of the wonderful friends I have on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth who cheered me on, who cheered me up, who offered terrific insight, and who believed that I would actually someday manage to finish this story—some of them for nearly three years. I don't deserve it, but thank you a thousand times over for your love and support.


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